Michael's Movie Grade: B+
An excellent and quite disturbing crime thriller from Iranian director, Ali Abbasi.
This is not an easy movie to watch by any means and that is the point, this should not be an easy movie to watch. This film is based on the real-life serial killer, Saeed Hanaei, who picked up and brutally murdered prostitutes believing that doing such was his calling from God to rid the world of such "wicked women." Though much of this film follows Saeed, it does not in any way play down the full horrors of what he did. The murder scenes are brutal here and will easily churn one's stomach. Yet this never comes across as exploitive or gratuitous. That these scenes haunt us so much only makes the rest of the movie more powerful. Yet the most disturbing scenes here are the ones where we see Saeed's home life. These scenes are not disturbing because of anything bad that happens during them but instead because of how calm they are. Looking at these scenes we could be looking at any family man, and if we to watch them out of context, the character would seem likable. The idea that this character goes on living a normal family life like he hasn't done anything wrong is truly terrifying. It is terrifying for two reasons. One is that if we ran across this man on the street, we would have no idea we are looking at a murder. The other reason is that we see no remorse or guilt for the horrible things he has done. The fact that this character is based off a real-life person, only makes it more chilling. Adding to this is a wonderful performance by Mehdi Bajestani. This film also follows a very dedicated journalist, who grows to feel more than simple empathy for the victims and this drives her further to find a way to stop this evil man. While this character could have been rather one note due to good writing and a wonderful performance by Zar Amir Ebrahimi, she becomes quite a bit more than that. She also becomes the character that we can emotionally connect to and care about, giving the film some of its finest suspense scenes. This film also offers some thought-provoking commentary about Iranian society and the sexism (and often acceptance of violence against women) very present in that society. While this is not done in a subtle way, in fact some of the dialogue can be a bit too on the nose for my taste, it is effective. The fact that there can be people not horrified by Saeed's actions is chilling, especially after we witnessed the horrors of his actions. The final scene in this movie is one of the most terrifying and heartbreaking scenes I have seen in a new movie for a long time. Though this is not a horror movie, nothing a horror film could do, could be quite as chilling as this, because this is not a spooky story but a terrifying reality we are looking at.
This movie does certainly have its faults though. One is that it is simply longer than it needs to be and could have benefited from a shorter runtime. Also sometimes the moving from being a thriller to a social commentary can feel abrupt and make it feel like two different movies. There is also that while our main characters are fascinating, the supporting characters are often quite bland. There is not much in the way of personality in these supporting characters and there are even a couple where I am not sure I could tell you just what their personalities were supposed to be. Also as mentioned earlier some of the dialogue was not only unsubtle but was too on the nose for my taste.
All in all this is an excellent film, even if it is not always an easy one to watch.
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