Ohhhhhhhhhh, “Azrael” was the name of the woman. Ok, I guess that makes sense now. Title-wise, at least. Not much else plays in this film festival drivel. Is this what counts for horror these days? Bunch of rejects from the “Thriller” video? Sure, why not?
The cult was mute. The escapees, mute. The film is, essentially, mute, that is except for one guy in a pickup truck who doesn’t speak English and gets killed inside of three minutes. So, you see that nobody ever says “Azrael.” Hence, it was impossible to know why the film was titled such.
Azrael (Samara Weaving) has escaped a cult of mutism. But there’s “escape” and there’s ESCAPE. And Azrael is not real good at the latter. We get a taste of the horror to come when Azrael is captured by the cult, and subsequently tied to a chair, leaving her as sacrifice to the world’s least scary zombies. Seriously, the guys who tied her to the chair are scarier than these slow-walking cannibals.
Given several chances to flee the forest community, Azrael keeps returning to it, which 1) didn’t make and sense and 2) kept annoying me. Look, woman, do you want to live or do
n’t you? Because I’m sure beyond the forest there’s a community of people who speak and don’t sacrifice people to sickly mod zombies.
Look, I’m not kidding here; the “monsters” in Azrael represent the least scary villains in 2024 film (aside from The Joker, of course). In lieu of words, what we get is a full compendium of Samara Weaving grunting. Ok, so you’ve “renounced the sin of speech.” Congratulations. But that didn’t stop you from picking up the sound effects from Samara’s three-set hard court loss with an extended tie-breaker. I suppose some of this film was intense; I mean, there’s constantly a woman on the loose being chased by a cult and their goth-chic monsters. The problem is I stopped caring after the second time a free Azrael returned to the cult-of-mute compound. If something cool happened after that, it made little difference to me.
Shot poorly, and obviously underwritten, (“Here’s the thing, I don’t know how to write dialogue.” “Don’t worry. I got you covered.”) Azrael feels like a film festival entry. And not a highlight; this one feels like it caught the eye of one judge and the other grudgingly gave it a 3pm Wednesday showing. Azrael couldn’t possibly have been made for more than the cost of a used bicycle, which I sorely wish the heroine had used to escape this picture and enter a better one.
There once was a woman, Azrael
Whose cult relied on a mutism sell
No yelling there be
When she tried to flee
But only the viewers were subjected to Hell
Rated R, 86 Minutes
Director: E.L. Katz
Writer: Simon Barrett
Genre: Speak no evil
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: The bored
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Actual fans if horror
