Azrael is definitely a good movie, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t expecting more from it. The pedigree behind it is fantastic. Director E.L. Katz, whose Cheap Thrills haunts me to this very day, and writer Simon Barrett, whose script for You’re Next is my personal Golden Goose of screenwriting, are two tremendous talents, capable of creating unique stories that linger long after the credits roll. Either name is enough to merit purchasing a ticket, so to have the two of them working together is beyond exciting. Yet despite their individual filmographies boasting a variety of excellent original films, Azrael disappoints. It feels like it’s been done before (because it has), and it plays less like a full movie, and more like two talented filmmakers challenging themselves to write and direct a film that features no dialogue at all. It’s a challenge that both men rise to ably, but the film lacks the juice to sustain feature length.
The story takes place after the biblical rapture. Short of a quick, somewhat cryptic title card, the ins and outs of the post-rapture world are not explicated, nor could they be given that nobody is able to speak. You see, after the rapture (a biblical event in which the “saved” among us ascend to heaven, leaving the sinners to compete for scraps in an abandoned world), the people who have been left behind have chosen not to speak, lest they commit the sin of their words. In this case it’s more than a choice: everyone has a visible neck scar, presumably left over from some sort of elective body modification that severs the vocal cords.
Samara Weaving plays Azrael, a young woman who gets kidnapped by a group of silent scavengers. Almost immediately she is offered as a sacrifice to a carnivorous, seemingly supernatural being. She manages to escape pretty quickly and soon finds herself on the run from her captors and actively hunting them down in revenge for the harm they caused to her and her lover (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett).
It’s a pretty straightforward cat and mouse flick, which is very much a strength. Since none of the characters speak, there is no avenue through which exposition can be…exposited. Instead we just have to take everything at surface value, and we can build the mythology in our own heads from there. This makes for a speedy pace, and a level of relentless intensity that elevate the basic script. It’s a wildly successful genre exercise in this regard. Points for being so lean and mean, but I have to dock a few points for it being too lean. As previously stated, Azrael feels like exactly that: an exercise.
On the one hand, it’s a hell of a showcase for everyone involved, and it highlights how smart most other filmmakers assume the audience isn’t. So often, filmmakers will over-explain their story as a safeguard against the least savvy viewer, and it’s nice to have a film like this one presented as is. Barrett and Katz have tremendous respect for their audience. On the other hand, it still feels like something is missing — some kind of hook that ties the collective silence to a thematic structure. The presumable assumption of the filmmakers is that the ambiguities of the mythology will add meat to a plot-forward script, but this doesn’t quite manifest when we don’t get to learn much about the characters. We can all hang out and discuss exactly what we think these spooky forest creatures are, but beyond that it’s a standard kidnap/escape/revenge flick. Short of nobody speaking, the rapture aspect doesn’t really add anything to the story. This could take place in any setting. The catch here is that if the characters were indeed chatty, there’d be little to elevate Azrael above any of its cinematic brethren. The silence ultimately registers as a gimmick.
Now to be sure, it’s a gimmick that shows off the storytelling/filmmaking ingenuity of both Katz and Barrett, as well as the incredibly expressive acting talents of Samara Weaving, and as such, it’s a success. It’s once these skills have been shown off that we need more, or to be more literal, less. Azrael would succeed greatly as a short film. With a truncated length there wouldn’t be time to recognize that, outside of some seriously killer gore, we’re just going through the genre motions.
Even with my complaints about the lack of material, one thing is for sure: Azrael is a thrilling and intense genre exercise, which, alongside the terrific gore effects and suspense sequences, is more than enough to make this one worth a trip to the theater. It’s just that a team up between Barrett and Katz should be a game changer. Instead, it just plays the game handsomely and by the books.
Directed by E.L. Katz
Written by Simon Barrett
Starring Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne, Mathan Stewart-Jarrett, Rea Lest
Rated R, 85 minutes
