AZRAEL (2024)

New streaming on Shudder and IFC Films!

Directed by E.L. Katz.
Written by Simon Barrett.
Check out the trailer here!!

From the director of CHEAP THRILLS and the writer of YOU’RE NEXT and THE GUEST comes AZRAEL, a story set in a post-apocalyptic future after the biblical rapture. Those left behind seem to have either become religious zealots or barbaric nomads, living simply in a commune in the middle of the woods that is also populated by wandering demons. The group has taken a vow of silence and its women are all pregnant, hoping to bear the new Anti-Christ. One woman (Samara Weaving) escapes the community and must evade capture from the zealots and the demons alike.

That’s one hell of a synopsis and AZRAEL is one hell of a movie. Much is supposed to be taken for granted upon going into this one. Mainly, that the biblical Rapture actually happened. While this is explained in the opening, I think it would have done this movie a favor if we saw how this Rapture went down. I get it. That kind of worldwide phenomena would be expensive to show, but even an animated sequence would have been nice to see. Now, having gone to church as a kid, I know about the Rapture, and I’m sure most do, but I think the filmmakers would have done the audience a favor to show their version of it in some way. They represent a prophecy of a woman caring for a demonic child as a chalk drawing on the wall of a church, so an artistic rendering of this biblical event would have been possible, cheap to make, and a unique way to bring the viewers up to date. Instead, it’s described in a paragraph at the beginning.

That’s a minor gripe about a relatively awesome movie as that really is just setup to a movie-long cat-and-mouse chase sequence. With everyone vowing silence, there is no exposition to be doled out and other than a Frenchman who is quickly offed, there is hardly any dialog at all in AZRAEL. This makes it a more raw and rugged film relying on action rather than words. E.L. Katz was responsible for the dialog heavy CHEAP THRILLS, so seeing him direct a balls out action-horror film with no dialog shows the filmmaker’s range and creativity. And while one might think a screenplay without dialog would be an easy feat, YOU’RE NEXT writer Simon Barrett keeps this interesting with twists, turns, and all sorts of obstacles in Weaving’s path to make this story an unpredictable one.

Weaving, as usual, is breathtaking, even covered in mud and soot. Since there is no dialog, it would be hard for most to really get you to empathize for the character, but because of her giant blue eyes, she expressed a myriad of emotions through blinks, squints, and wide-eyed expressions of terror. She is put through a gauntlet of horrors and it is refreshing to see an actress of Weaving’s caliber return to the horror genre over and over again.

While the ending is kind of predictable, the trip there isn’t. Anyone who has seen films whose plot hinges on a prophecy knows its going to come about one way or another in the end and this one, of course, does just that. But it is the unique peril Weaving is placed into and the especially gnarly demons, all soot covered, staggering, and tumorous, that really makes you root for Weaving to get out alive. AZRAEL may have had a bare bones script with no dialog, but in the end, it used this factor as a benefit to make a grungy, down in the muck, survival nightmare.