The part that gets me is that I have no idea how we got here (and frankly neither do you). Unless, of course, you’re deep in end-of-times lore, in which case please talk to me. I always wanted to know how I’m going to die.
I recently saw Azrael (2024), the new movie from IFC Films that was recently getting praise at film festivals and is now getting ready to release to the public. If you’re unfamiliar with the film, it’s about a community that is actively living through the end of times, prime post-rapture real estate if you will, and they’re hunting down this woman named Azrael (Samara Weaving).
Let’s get this out of the way. If you’ve seen Ready or Not (2019), you’d already expect this movie to be Samara Weaving just owning everyone for about 90 minutes, and I was not disappointed in that assumption. However, a few key things really got me invested in her story.
We get no backstory to what’s happening here: not dialogue, not a flashback, not even a Star Wars-style scrolling novel catching us up on the devil’s work thus far. So we get to piece together this world as we’re living through it with Azrael. We don’t even really know for most of the movie why it is they want to capture Azrael so bad, but she has a key role to play in this cult.
Now we do get a lot of clues and small details along the way which allows me to enjoy arguably one of my favorite and probably most irritating movie pasttimes, where I get to talk through the movie pointing out random things in the background while I hypothesize recklessly.
What we do know is this. This is a very bleak post-apocalyptic world where Azrael is not only being hunted by this community, but there’s also the danger of these human-like creatures roaming the woods, which I interpreted to be demons who are now free to roam the earth.
The community post-rapture is mute and no one speaks. So inherently there’s virtually no dialogue or script, but kudos to Samara Weaving for carrying this movie on her back with nothing but facial expressions and grunting.
Here’s the part we don’t know that intrigues me, and that’s the reason why we’ve banned speech. Throughout the film, we do find out that the silence is not worldwide, but a rule that seems to be exclusive to this particular community. Unlike movies like A Quiet Place (2018), the monsters in this world don’t appear to react exclusively to sound. So what happened pre-rapture or in the thick of it that led this community to believe that speaking was the cause of their new personal hell?
I suspect it has something to do with an image that we see several times throughout the film. It shows your standard “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” image, but in this one, the “speak no evil” figure has another one whispering in its ear. Perhaps this is referencing that the real evil is speaking, repeating false truths, or something of that nature.
This movie gives a lot to unpack and chew on, and the ending is pretty open to interpretation too. Despite the lack of script, the film was action-packed and well-paced throughout, along with a healthy amount of blood and gore to please any seasoned horror fan. Frankly, there’s something really refreshing about this entry in horror this year, so definitely check it out.
Azrael (2024) is opening in theaters on September 27th.
IFC Film's latest movie "Azrael" will leave you speechless