Azrael
While the concept of humor through film in ‘Azrael’ can be applauded regarding the wordless gore filled indie in the revenge genre about a woman who flees a religious sect and zombies if such things exist the film has been a sucker in showing some very basic aspects of its premise. In its quest to create a clearer image, the movie ends in a bizarre compromise that presents viewers with conflicting meanings rather than the intended meaning.
This point highlighted by onscreen text relates to a post apocalyptic society where ‘Christian’ fanatics have forsaken ‘the sin of speech, the E.L. Katz directed horror film begins in the middle of action more than should be. A crucifix brand tattooed on her throat, a woman (Samara Weaving) walks through a dense thicket, retaining a retrospective gaze, only to chide her male companion (Nathan Stewart Jarrett) for trying to kindle a flame silently. Both of them seem to be into what the two, gesticulating almost, yet portray the observed as opposed to the observed in the game ย morphology simply.
By the end, it is more or less accepted that the silence was theirs for all the time, but the characters act as if they recently lost their power of speech the moment the cameras started rolling. They appear not to have developed any significant non-verbal communication and this points to weak world-building and creates a poorly developed romantic relationship between the protagonists. Instead of being people who came to an understanding, they act as though they were strangers who have been thrown together by some hair raising event, though what those events are is not very clear.
Later in the plot when the armed, quasi police members of their sect move in to take the pair, Weaving’s character is first tied down, and her shins are slashed with a razor one at a time to the point of bleeding, to attract something in the wilderness. Yet it is still not clear whether it is in fact blood that will serve as such a trigger. The sectists later lie down on each other and appear to be gasping for breath and then exhaling loudly as if trying to invoke something from the deep.
It can be told that, it is some butchery work which has been done on a zombie ghoulish character, with dark dull skin falling apart and desires for a human meat. Rescuing herself from the conqueror’s tight hold, Weaving resumes her mission, which is to find Stewart Jarrett, and as she is changing the scene on the forest, light is breaking into the forest in amazing scenes. Instead, she keeps quiet, she does not shout his name, but the film’s desire to shout is seldom illustrated by the lack of such depiction even though it is an essential feature. There are later, of a more ambiguous nature, suggestions that this mute condition, which had lasted for many years, would appear to be due to some surgical processes as there are manifestations of scars and the characters’ pharynx is working so hard in context to breathing or just screaming silently. Also genocide doesn’t go to the extent of silencing all combatants and even the ones that have challenged the anthropologist’s departure from communication patterns those whom the anthropologist recommended sounded but did not use existing forms of language.
Why the character of Weaving is in a constant state of flight has not been answered. Is it, in fact, the straitjacket which we are not presented with? Did the sacrificial zombie of the custom mean that she was punished for being a runaway or was it supposed to be her escape in the first place? And the casting decisions made by the film could give some insight to the matter in what the movie is about Weaving is Caucasian and Stewart-Jarrett is African American and very few Africans American followers are portrayed in the cult even though the film suggests that its villains may have an anti-miscegenation attitude, this lack of clarity only accumulates with excessive use of metaphorical language. If this includes particular scenes and story decisions, as for instance one overtly Sanders Stewart Jarrett’s being shackled to a tree stump or a hanging of some one on a tree which evoke most of the time the almost palpable relations of the anti-Black racism in the American past, they seldom provide a unified and coherent thesis statement that the movie ambitions to prospect.
With regards to the religious worldbuilding in the film, even this leads to more vagueness. The pregnant priestess heads the cult comprising of a rickety wooden church ontarium locked around purported prophetic paintings, and Weaving’s character herself is somehow endowed with the power to see visions. Still, the depiction of this power is very superficial and without any reference to her ordeal and therefore disengaging with the message as each new form of development is presented is not easy.
Quite a few bloody scenes are included in “Azrael,” which make the picture amusing and mysterious, the rest of the time it is hardly ever effective, even in the many scenes of blood and gore, and even then a lot of by the shadows. Its sound is quite the opposite, lacking clashes and dull to the sound of the gun but it is boiling in noise, extenuating each step, whisper and even bang, though to the perception of those involved doing the action. This isn’t “A Quiet Place” after all where one hears noise and as such one is in danger but maybe just maybe better thought out technical world building would have had Readers even the visuals of Azrael Dunn through the eyes of Weaving.
Although “Azrael” is rarely outright terrifying, it does have elements that can be quite unnerving in relation to the esoteric beliefs or supernatural phenomena later in the film when what they allude to comes back around. Yet, their being edited this way is less suggestive of any relation of Weaving’s character with these imaginations, more of attempts to put forward explanations and plot points to the viewers in cases where the image has failed. It does show some instances of the ‘righteous butcher’ (its title is an angel of vengeance), yet what exactly is the heroine of the film fighting for or against is so vague that not even the most gory action beats can grab any emotional beats.
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