It's getting harder and harder to do new things with horror. As technology evolves and the skin of the audience toughens up to meet that of Leatherface, sometimes you have to look to other people - and places - to provide fresher and better alternatives. This is where low budget Iranian film Under the Shadow comes in, possibly the first Farsi-language film to find success in the horror mainstream. Festival audiences shrieked their way through it earlier this year, and now it's back to haunt us some more. Combining the horrors of war with the horrors of scary ghosties, Under the Shadow is unlike anything else you will see in a cinema this year.
The first feature film effort of Iranian director Babak Anvari,Under the Shadow takes place in war-torn Tehran in 1988. The terrors and conflict of the post-revolution linger daily; the sound of missile attacks as ubiquitous as an icecream truck in summer.
The film follows a woman named Shideh (played by Narges Rashidi) and her family, living in the midst of the War of the Cities. Accused of rebelling by the government, she is blacklisted from medical school and begins to fall into despondence.
Faced to raise her young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi) alone in the face of earth-shattering violence, Shideh's mental state slowly declines. After the sinister death of an elderly neighbour, evil forces appear to have taken hold of their apartment building. This is where the real horror kicks in, blurring the lines between her visions and the supposed haunting of their apartment building by a cursed Middle Eastern spirit called a djinn.
Much like Australian festival smash The Babadook, a blood-curdling exploration of a mother's grief, Under the Shadow becomes as much an exercise in isolation and fear in times of conflict as it is a movie about spooky ghosts.
