Denis Villeneuve recently caused a surprising firestorm by daring to suggest that the visual medium of cinema should rely primarily on the image, not words. It seems like E.L. Katz has taken that wisdom deeply to heart with supernatural horror Azrael.
Modern silent movies have been a little bit of a theme at this year’s South by Southwest, with the Zellner bros.’ cryptid family drama Sasquatch Sunset making a very unlikely double bill with Katz’s follow-up to his SXSW title, Cheap Thrills. It also marks a dramatic change of pace for scriptwriter Simon Barrett, who cut his writing teeth on wordier, introspective chillers like revisionist home invasion thriller You’re Next and serial killer relationship tragedy A Horrible Way to Die. He’s no stranger to supernatural horror, having written 2016’s Blair Witch, and having both written and directed high school scarer Séance and “The Empty Wake” segment of horror anthology V/H/S/94. However, the wordlessness of Azrael seems like a deliberate challenge for himself, one that he gobbles up just as arisen, charred carcasses devour flesh in Azrael’s disturbingly excellent scenes of pursuit and gore.
If it’s a change of pace for Barrett, Azrael allows Samara Weaving to complete her trilogy of “unlikely bloodied heroes” that began with Joe Lynch’s workplace comedy-horror Mayhem and continued with the equally gorily hilarious Ready or Not. But there are no laughs to be had in this pre-apocalyptic horror. That timing is specific: The Rapture, as noted in a pre-title card, has already happened, so everyone left behind has less than spotless hands. Or not. Who knows what whims of a capricious and absent God have resulted in the battered Azrael (Weaving) and her lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) being forced to roam a dense and merciless wilderness? They cannot tell us, as their vocal cords have been severed, leaving a cross-shaped scar on their throats.
Who did this, and why? That’s all ambiguous, and deliberately so. Barrett’s script is an intentional, measured exercise in minimalism, forcing the audience to construct the world from its components: a cult; burned and bloodthirsty human-line creatures that roam the forest, blind and ravenous; a church; and something whispering through a crack in a wooden wall.
Those millenarian apocalyptic themes may be the most resonant for Barrett, who clearly draws on his own experiences in rural Missouri. Azrael may have been filmed in Estonia, but the underlying horror is that of pious residents of small towns in the Midwest having been told, in no uncertain terms, that God hates them all. Azrael’s navigation of this supernatural survival nightmare always comes with the unanswerable question of what she did to be left behind, and Barrett (who originally drafted the script to direct himself), Katz, and Weaving all work together to keep that ambiguity just in the corner of the audience’s eye. Weaving, who excels at this kind of character-driven action-horror, plays perfectly with our empathy, wordlessly guiding us through this damned land. When her destination is revealed, nobody should be surprised: Azrael simply proves, chillingly, that Villeneuve was right.
Azrael
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This article appears in March 8 • 2024.