Sean Parker
If 2023’s No One Will Save You proved anything, it’s that there is a market for originality in how we tell our stories. The straight-to-Hulu release of the Kaitlin Dever-led alien abduction movie was positively received overall and supported the idea that a great story can transcend dialogue. Now, almost exactly a year later, Channel Zero: The Dream Door and Haunting of Bly Manor director E.L. Katz brings us Azrael, another uniquely untalkative motion picture.
Teaming up with Simon Barrett, the writer behind You’re Next and multiple segments from the V/H/S franchise, Azrael tells the story of a young woman (Ready or Not’s Samara Weaving) and her partner (Femme’s Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) as they escape from an ultra-religious sect in the wake of the biblical rapture. In a population that is seen but not allowed to be heard, people have their voice boxes removed under the belief that only sinners speak. The couple communicate through body language as we see them together on the lam. However, rather quickly, the religious followers recapture the two, absconding with the man and offering the female’s fate to a demonic creature in the woods. Narrowly avoiding her fate, the story’s nameless woman escapes, now needing to survive the monster-filled woods.
Azrael is the name of Weaving’s character, though it’s never really said out loud, mainly because no one has voice boxes. However, you figure it out by the time the credits roll. Azrael is known in most religions as the Angel of Death, but the specifics vary depending on which.
From the get-go, Azrael is a film that is deeply felt. From the joyous sunlight washing over the woodsy lovers’ getaway to the dark, fatalistic confined spaces Weaving’s character is eventually placed in. Dread drips throughout the film. Without dialogue, the actors are left to emote their fear, anger, despondency, and so forth, and the film is richly communicative while barely uttering a word. Moments of sublime terror and gore are not hard to come by either. And though tension building in scenes helps raise audiences’ pulses, Azrael moves at such a break-neck pace it may actually be more in line with action movies. Regardless, the film is unrelenting, making it easy to watch and not get lost in sensory overload by the incredible musical score by Tóti Guðnason or the serene images of the forest greenery.
The film’s use of light and dark is maybe the best thing about it. Azrael takes place over the course of a single day, and as the darkness creeps into the story, the film becomes more harrowing. It starts with a trailer moment, where Azrael is seen crouched in the corner of a dilapidated structure, having been chased into the darkness by a demon. The idea of good and evil is very much on display through this imagery, and those walking around in the light aren’t always the good guys. As the film shifts toward campfire light and truck headlight sequences, additional interesting allegories are on display. In many of these low-light sequences, Katz gives little nods to Neil Marshall’s The Decent.
While the underlying catalyst of the film isn’t dissimilar to any of the John Wick’s, being that the antagonists should have simply let Azrael and her beau go on their merry, the sect instead forces a “f*ck around and find out” situation where A: they f*cked around. And B: they’re going to f*cking find out. You’ve probably heard of religions retrieving members against their will, but in Azrael, there’s another message baked into the film’s plot. This is very much a tale of right-wing religious ideology and hypocrisy.
While the revenge portions of Azrael’s wrath are certainly visceral, the concept of the sect’s extreme punishment is very much in line with current red state abortion ban laws where states promoted legislature to give people the death penalty. While that sounds hyperbolic, it very much isn’t. The proposed 2021 Texas legislature was narrowly avoided. In 2023, South Carolina proposed a similar bill. In 2024, Texas Republicans said they were open to applying the law to abortion providers instead. And that’s very much the subtext of what we’re watching in Azrael, as she fights for her life against a culture that would like to see her killed for no longer accepting its absolutes. The film goes slightly deeper into that in its finale, but I’ll let you see it for yourself.
2024 marks an exciting year for women in horror. As Roe v Wade became overturned, it has brought us remarkable counter-culture stories like The First Omen, Immaculate, Apartment 7A, and Azrael, that are out here fighting for what bodily autonomy means. While I think Azrael may not hit the levels of some of the other titles on this list, the film still manages the feat of creating breathtaking, indelible imagery that will sear itself into the forefront of your mind. That being said, Azrael does mix some of its metaphors, making it a little more unclear than the others. But if you bear in mind that these are the days following the rapture and the devils are all here, then you know there are no heavenly angels among them.
Azrael will surely have its detractors and suffer the slings and arrows of religious superfans wishing to knock down its various scores across the internet. However, it’s a solid horror offering for horror fans who like the punk rock spirit of filmmaking and baked in socio-political ideals. It’s fast, fierce, and bursting with all the rage of putting Furiosa in A Handmaid’s Tale. If that strikes you as something worth seeing, let Azrael show you the darkness and the light.
Azrael is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Azrael – Official Trailer | HD | IFC Films
Opening in theaters September 27. Many years following the apocalypse, a devout cult of mute zealots hunts down Azrael (Samara Weaving), a young woman who escaped her own imprisonment- and she will stop at nothing to ensure her own survival. Director: E. L.
