E. L. Katz’s lukewarm effort “Azrael” shows very few horror elements and does not come close to being scary. The film opens with a lady and a gentleman in what seems to be a romantic relationship but is occasionally strained. The couple is unable to speak and the audience communicates only through affectionate daughter’s embraces and father’s gaze. However, their reality is far from perfect. There is a threat that feeds off sound and movement making quiet and motionless a necessary condition for survival. They are rudely awoken from their idealistic woodsy fantasies by the violent capture of other humans attempting to enact an unknown plot. They too are mute. As the horrors draw closer on every side, Azrael (Samara Weaving) has to take the bull by the horns to win the battle for her life.
Samara Weaving, who made a name for herself from the amazing family survival thriller “Ready or Not” finds herself in an almost identical “me against the world” scenario. Unfortunately, this story written and co produced by Simon Barrett offers her nothing to work with except for portraying fear and strains. One onone sequence of chase follows another with brief glimpses of context flickering in and out in the right amount needed to keep the plot intact but does nothing in answering all questions. In contrast, her partner Kenon (Nathan Stewart Jarrett) is literally an emotional prop, a mere appendage as soon as he is out of focus in the frame.
It’s in this sense more of a reference than a gory thematic elementAzrael also has some similar sounding parallels (if you don’t already know the story, it’s named after the angel of death), other religious themes and motifs are seen within the encampment, which also features a church with Mary like figurine named Miriam (Vic Carmen Sonne) who is depicted to be second in command to a woman named Josefine (Katariina Unt) who appears in the movie. There are unearthed candles and crude drawings that emphasize the point, yet it is clearly meant to assert Miriam’s authority as the theocratic figure of the bunch a cult leader. She is covered in pristine white cloth while the rest are dressed in tree bark colored tatters; it’s obvious who runs the show and what the hierarchy is. One of the many unanswered questions is why do Josefine and Miriam want Azrael to die at the claws of the creatures. Is there some significance of it being a pure offering? Or does Azrael prove a danger to Miriam, of whom Azrael poses a threat. Doomsday has a lot of layers that open many bottles that there are cool new riddles that are worth solving.
There are hints regarding other horror classics within the topics of the movie such as the title when it appears on screen, which is similar to the style seen in Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” or the pregnancy of Miriam in a way similar to Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby.” There was no cinematic storytelling more perfected than the one, which is illustrated by John Krasinski’s “A Quiet Place” and used a sound and absence of dialogue as a creative element rather than a constrictor.
Katz fails to maintain the same level of tension and many things remain unsaid throughout owing to the absence of conversations or exchanges. Some shots taken by cinematographer Mart Taniel seem engaging like the one where sunlight comes sifting through leaves and car’s headlights reveal the silhouetted trees standing against complete darkness, but they don’t last long enough to appreciate. Other scenes are rendered rather straight forward, shot in such a manner that nothing was too jumpy and only worth remembering, when the film monsters feed off the hapless victims who happened to be in their way.
As for those monsters, the demon’s faces are like burn victims emerging from the core of the hell, charred and blackened but red muscles and blood ooze out from underneath where the skin has completely gone. Such action is brutal, still, not that frightening because the rationale behind such beings make sense only in the context of the plot. In the beginning of the movie, Azrael has a panic attack because her husband has lit an ovenite flame, but afterwards, the site seems quite comfortable with lighting fires for overhead illumination.
They do however make good points about the creatures as much as flimsy barricades are inviting disaster in terms of daring these creatures. The figures walk like zombies, while sneaking towards their target unsteadily, but they can also switch their gaits to an instant sprint when they go after a target that is moving away from them. They stalk and bay for blood and noise, and like the T Rex in “Jurassic Park” they don’t see someone when they are still, but at other times it is the other way around. Most of the time, these inconsistencies just keep the viewer confused, but not in any good way.
On the whole, though observers would anticipate some “shivers” or the “wow” moments, “Azrael” fails to provide any such energy which can be scary for the target audience. The strange setting where the story takes place climaxes as confused as it starts, a cliche attempt at combining religion and horror in order to elicit scares from the audience. Rather, the movie sets a sinister tone, like a badly built haunted house. Letters in the gaps between the scenes do not help to glue one scene to the other in a logically sensible way, so the majority of the picture your brain starts to fill in already the pretext for the most part of the picture, which turns out to be more tedious than interesting. This Quiet Place bonus tries too hard and does not differentiate itself and scares the viewers using everything that they have seen before.
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