Wounds

Bugs ‘N’ Kisses

Wounds
Directed by Babak Anvari 2019 UK
London Film Festival 2019 screening Saturday 5th October

For my third film of this year’s London Film Festival, I saw Wounds, which is the second feature length film by the Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari, known for his previous movie Under The Shadow (which I kinda raved about here). The film is written by the director and based on the novella The Visible Filth by Nathan Ballingrud. It’s also, like his first feature, a horror movie. In the question and answer session after this screening, Anvari said that it was purely an accident that he returned to this genre as he wanted to demonstrate some kind of proficiency with various different kinds of movie genres before returning to horror but, after he was fed a copy of the novella on which this is based, he realised he was so in tune with it and the author (unknown to him at the time but now a good friend) that he had to do this one.

And... I have to say that, although it lands in the same genre as the last one, it really isn’t that much like his debut feature. Similarities would include things like some lovely shot compositions and, as his first film, the sound design plays an important role (yeah, I’ll get to my embarrassment about the sound design later). At a stretch, I’d say another common feature is that it’s starts off as a slow burn before the director ratchets up the intensity... although, in a way, that could be said of a lot of movies.

One main difference, though, apart from this not being a ghost story but more a ‘demonic possession/body horror’ tale, is that he has some real 'A list' Hollywood talent. The film stars Armie Hammer as main protagonist Will, who shows just how intense and edgy he can play here... along with Dakota Johnson as his girlfriend Carrie and the wonderful Zazie Beetz (who I loved in Deadpool 2, reviewed here) as former girlfriend Alicia. All the cast are particular good in this but a new level of respect to these three for being brave enough to see this one through.

Will is a college drop out and one of the main, much loved bartenders at his local pub in New Orleans and the majority of the action of film, with a few notable exceptions, is set either in the bar or in the apartment he shares with Carrie. It was the director’s intent, as he made clear in the Q&A after the film had finished, that he was trying to make a film which started off and looked like one of those 80s relationship movies like Reality Bites, to suck the viewer in before going full horror. He also mentioned, among many influences name checked, his love of the films of David Cronenberg... so you can see exactly how someone like him can arrive at what is a fairly intense and somewhat technologically aware adaptation like this.

I say technologically aware because the peculiar brand of demonic witchcraft gone wrong, if that’s what it is, is passed on by means of a mobile phone left in the bar by some college kids who leave when a fight breaks out. When Will forgets he put the phone in his pocket and takes it home, he starts seeing some strange messages pop up. Using some not too hard to figure out detective work to quickly crack the password in the space of about thirty seconds, he then starts answering some of the texts and it’s not too long before some nasty images start to appear along with all manner of things which threaten the fabric of his and his girlfriends reality... there’s a lovely scene where he comes home and finds her staring into a slow moving portal displayed on her laptop and it takes him putting her into a bath to wake her from her bizarre coma (and that’s not all that happens in that scene but I won’t tell you what happens when he puts her in the bath).

One of the things the director does nicely... and I think it’s this more than anything else in the movie that could be said to be a partial homage to the modus operandi of Cronenberg, is to blur the lines for the audience about the sanity of their main protagonist (that being said, there's a possible armpit growth happening too... flashes of Rabid, reviewed here). He uses little flashes of things like the severed heads of Will’s friends, which Will obviously sees as well as the audience, to start planting doubt in the viewers mind. The director referenced Nicholas Roeg in relation to these moments when he talked to the audience after the movie but in some ways they’re a slightly different kind of association... although, to be fair, since we don’t know how the character of Will progresses after ‘the incident’ which is the final shot of the movie (yeah, like I’m going to tell you what that is here), they could be very much in keeping with Roeg’s flash forward/flash back visions of the history of his characters so, yeah, maybe that was this director’s intent with those almost subliminal moments all along.

Asides from having a good script and some great actors in it, I mentioned the shot designs earlier. This guy likes his verticals and he hasn’t abandoned them here. I’d really need to watch this again to unravel what I was seeing but one of the things I really liked was a shot fairly late in the movie where Will is breaking into his girlfriend’s computer and there is one of those classic fans on the desk. There’s a cool moment where we see Will’s head, with the fan taking up the visual space in front of half his head but, because the blades are moving so fast, we don’t see them at all, just Will’s face. I’m guessing that must have been a hard thing to capture what with film speeds and not getting some kind of motion clash but it made for a nice shot and one wonders if it was some kind of metaphor for the way the character is, quite possibly, becoming immersed in something... evil.

There are also a lot of bugs.

Cockroaches, in fact. These are definitely both a metaphor and an indication in the movie that something bad is coming... they seem to have a homing instinct and are drawn to things which have become ‘demonically touched’ and, according to the director, they were a real pain to work with. There’s a beautiful rendered moment when Will first presses ‘play’ on a video which arrives on the phone which involves the cockroaches attracted to a severed head/skull and, the end moment of this video, where the film takes the first real turn into giving you a sense of the supernatural at work, is a really nicely executed shock idea. I’m sure it’s been done before but not necessarily in this medium and it’s certainly effective here. Again, though, I’m trying to keep this review spoiler free so... go see it yourself, I understand it’s getting a release in a couple of weeks though, sadly, only on the internet and not in a proper cinema or home video release (as yet... what is wrong with this country?).

The other thing in this is the sound design and the... ahem... score. Like his first feature, Anvari uses a powerful blend of soundscapes that help the film along. There’s a nice moment, for instance, where Will is slowly swiping through the phone and, each time he swipes, it’s echoed within the sound design. As I was watching this I found myself desperately hoping for a CD release of the score so I could hear the lovely atonalism of the music better. Imagine my surprise then when, in the Q&A, the director said something along the lines of... “obviously, there was no musical score in the movie, just sound design we created...” So, yeah, I guess nothing was actually ‘composed’ for the movie and that just shows how I’ve become used to modern horror movie music, which a lot of the time tends to sound like this stuff anyway. Oh well. I say this owning an old vinyl copy of the non-musical ‘soundtrack’ of Eraserhead so, yeah, I don’t have that special kind of tunnel vision which says music has to include melody, rhythm and harmony like a lot of people do, I guess.

Still, despite the lack of music, Wounds works a treat and the ending is nicely done. Alas, I wish this was getting a cinematic or Blu Ray release so I could take another look at it but, either way, this film is another strong recommendation from me and something I think will appeal to most fans of horror films. Like The Antenna, which I saw at the London Film Festival the night before (my review of that one is here), this would have done really well at FrightFest this year, although the audience would probably have been a little smaller, I would imagine. Definitely one to watch out for.

Under The Shadow

Djiin And Tonic

Under The Shadow
UK/Iran/Jordan/Qatar 2016
Directed by Babak Anvari
Precision Pictures DVD Region 2

I’ve been meaning to catch up to this Iranian horror movie since it played the festivals here in September of last year and, while I was in Fopp at the weekend, I thought I’d pick up a copy. After searching their horror section for a Blu Ray for quite a while I enquired after it and the guy behind the counter told me that the company who put it out didn’t bother with a Blu Ray release for this country. You could tell he was angry about it and I joined him in this anger... it’s pretty outrageous that you can’t get hold of films which you’d hope would be playing in a couple of screens of your local multiplex but were never even shown there, and that they would be made available in the best quality format possible. Especially with the warm reception this one had. These companies should really have a think about what they're doing now. This kind of crime against filmanity isn’t acceptable in this day and age.

Then I got further enraged because, instead of being in the horror section, the DVD, which was already only a fiver because, you know, it wasn’t a proper Blu Ray... was placed in a world cinema section instead. Okay... really people, there should be no need for a ‘world cinema’ section. We’re all one world. Those kind of artificial boundaries created so 'idiots who can’t read' are able to better avoid properly subtitled films should be banished from shops and instead everything should be listed together and in alphabetical order. With the odd categories like science fiction, westerns and horror maybe thrown in for good measure... although that obviously doesn’t take into account cross-pollinated genres so, yeah, maybe not even that.

Anyway, for a very cheap price I finally got to see Under The Shadow and it was well worth the wait and, it has to be said, more than worth the price of admission. The film is set in the Iraq/Iranian war in 1980s Tehran and the credits start off with actual footage from those times. We then focus on an interview, of sorts, as the main female protagonist of the movie, Shideh, played skillfully by the beautiful Narges Rashidi, tries and fails to get back into her University course where she was studying to be a doctor before she became ‘politically active’. The way of life for these people is drummed home effectively when a big explosion outside the office window goes off without any reaction other than for both of the characters in the room to casually look around when the explosion occurs, offering testament to the matter of factness of the loss of life in this part of the world at this time. When Shideh goes home to pick up her young daughter Dorsa, the other main protagonist of the film, played by Avin Manshadi, the director did something which really won me over in terms of this movie.... but I’ll get to that in a paragraph or two.

Shideh is living with her doctor husband and her daughter in an apartment but something’s wrong with their place, although Shideh doesn’t realise or even accept it yet. Her daughter receives a good luck charm to ward off evil spirits, specifically a djinn spirit, from an ‘adopted’ child in another apartment but things go wrong for her when she loses it. Now the djinn steals her favourite doll and, once it gets a hold on her consciousness, it proceeds to try to steal Dorsa away from her mother, setting up emotional barriers between the two. Things get worse once Shideh’s husband is called up to be a doctor in the war and he leaves home, strongly suggesting that, since Tehran is rumoured to be hit with missiles soon, Shideh and Dorsa go to stay with his parents. And so, as various neighbours move out before the rumoured bombs start flying, the movie becomes about Shideh and Dorsa living with the possibility that something very strange is going on in the house until, eventually, they are the only ones left with the malevolent spirit and battle commences.

The acting is excellent and you really feel for Shideh and what is going on with her situation. And it’s supported by amazing cinematography, shot design and editing which completely push this movie into a special place. The director uses big vertical blocks of texture/colour within the movie, which is mostly set in the interior of the block of flats and these big bold statements really provide a lot of scope for visually anchoring what is essentially 'a ghost story' and exploiting the shapes and depths of the shot design to frightening and, often, beautiful effect.

That thing he did which first impressed me, for instance, which occurs when Shideh first goes to pick up Dorsa from a neighbour, totally blew me away. We have a shot where Shideh is standing in a corridor and about to knock on her neighbour’s door. The big shape, dark colour and texture of the door takes up the right hand half of the shot with our main protagonist highlighted to the left of it on the other half of the screen. Then, as her neighbour answers the door, the camera is panned around a little at roughly the same speed to take in what’s through the doorway. Because the door opens inwards, the door shape has now switched to take up the left half of the screen and we see Shideh’s neighbour framed perfectly in the right hand space of the shot. I nearly fell off my chair when I saw how perfectly this was done.

This is fantastic stuff but the director also makes good use of certain realities of living in a zone where there are lots of explosions going off. Namely in how the windows of the flat are decorated. I’ve heard of this before, although never seen it done but... the windows have masking tape placed around the edges and crossing in the middle so that, if any bombs go off in the vicinity, the shockwave is less likely to take out the windows with it. And, of course, since the flat has a fair few windows, the director can make real good use of this by pitching light in through the windows to leave ominous looking crosses of shadow throughout the apartment at key moments. It’s a nice idea and it works really well.

He doesn’t just use the visual elements to single out areas where he wants your attention either. There’s some nice use of sound to hone in on things too. For instance, there are a number of scenes where Shideh is seen doing her daily workout regime. It’s basically using an old, diving board buttoned VHS machine with a copy of the once popular Jane Fonda workout cassette in it but, as things get just a little more intense for Shideh and her grasp of what’s going on in the apartment, there’s a scene where this gorgeous actress is seen doing her aerobics but, as we move closer to her, the soundtrack of the cassette is dialled down to nothing and this really helps the mind focus on the figure of a mother flying in the face of adversity and sticking her routine.

That moment also ties up nicely to another scene later in the movie where, for reasons I won’t reveal here, Shideh no longer has the tape and so she still, just silently, does her usual routine but without the constant input of Ms. Fonda to help her. It’s also vaguely reminiscent of how directors like Kurosawa or Friedkin would sometimes use the sound design to focus in or provide a stark, sobering contrast to something which has come before, or sometimes after, a specific moment in a movie.

The other thing I got out of this was just how different the culture is in this country compared to the unfortunate people who lived in Tehran at the time. For instance, a scene where Shideh has to tell off her child for mentioning the video recorder in front of a stranger because they are not allowed to have such things says a lot about the society she lives in. As does the sequence where she grabs her kid in fear, runs into the street and is promptly detained or not wearing enough clothing covering all of her body. It really shows how ‘in the dark ages’ some cultures are, especially with their attitude to the female contingent of their population. To the writer's credit, the dialogue given to the policeman who detains Shideh shows his ignorant attitude in a negative light too so... yeah. Something to think about, I suspect.

All in all, I had a great time with Under The Shadow and would heartily recommend it, not just to fans of a slowly building ghost story but also to the general cineaste at large. The characters and their situations are haunting, if maybe not quite terrifying, and the shot design and gravitas of some of the situations combine well to give a truly outstanding film. Definitely don’t let this one slip into obscurity... it deserves better.