10/29: Under the Shadow

10/29

Today's film was a first, a Persian-language horror film! Set during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, Under the Shadow follows young mother Shideh as bombings approach Tehran. Shideh's husband has left to the frontlines leaving her with her daughter Dorsa to navigate living in a warzone. When a bomb is dropped on their apartment building but does not detonate, an entity, a Djinn, is unleashed. It attaches itself to Dorsa and wreaks chaos upon their lives that are already under immense strain from the circumstances out of their control.

Or does it? Is this Djinn real, or is it a biproduct of Shideh's PTSD living in a wartorn country? Add to that that Shideh has recently lost her mother almost simultaneously with finding out that, due to earlier political activism, she will no longer be able to pursue her education to become a doctor (something that her mother strongly supported), and the evidence that this may all be Shideh's own breakdown is clear. 

Under the Shadow is an incredibly intelligent film that studies everything from motherhood to culture to being a modern woman in a society that requires modesty. Shideh's struggles are real and thus the entity that haunts them feels real as well. It questions the nature of her relationship with her daughter who is growing up in this world that imposes many requirements upon her. The film may be light on the traditional scares we would expect from a movie like this in the West, but it's all the stronger for it; when the entity does show up it's all the more terrifying and real. I was fascinated by seeing another culture's view on what makes a haunting and what haunts us as people. 

This movie is definitely worth a watch as a new take on the haunting genre and one that brings a cultural viewpoint that few of us have been exposed to. Being a blanket ghost is scary, guys.

9/10

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