JP Nunez
There’s something incredibly satisfying about a good revenge flick. Maybe it’s because bad people don’t always get what they deserve, or because so many of our problems are caused by impersonal enemies we can’t punish, but whatever the reason, this genre holds a special place in a lot of film fans’ hearts, mine included. I just love seeing horrible people get their bloody comeuppance on screen, so when I heard about Sayara, I was instantly intrigued. This movie sounded like the kind of brutal quest for vengeance I just eat up, and I couldn’t wait to see what gruesome thrills it had in store.
Sayara was written and directed by Can Evrenol, and it stars Duygu Kocabiyik, Emre Kizilirmak, and Özgül Kosar. In the film, the titular Sayara works as a janitor at a gym, but don’t let her lowly station fool you. This woman is about as dangerous as they come. Her father trained her in numerous martial arts, so you don’t want to get on her bad side.
But unfortunately for the gym owner and his friends, that’s exactly what they do. They kill Sayara’s sister Yonja and try to pass it off as a suicide, but the ruse doesn’t work. Sayara knows they did it, and when she sets out to avenge her sister’s death, she doesn’t let anybody or anything stand in her way.
The opening act of a revenge movie typically has two jobs. It needs to make the good guys sympathetic, and it has to make the villains as loathsome as possible. Unsurprisingly, Sayara tries to do both of those things, but it only succeeds at one of them. Let’s start with what this film does poorly.
Sayara is a good protagonist, but Yonja is a bit wonky. She’s one of the gym owner’s multiple mistresses, and when she sees him with other women, she becomes jealous. It’s a bit of an odd dynamic, so I had a tough time sympathizing with the character. Granted, she didn’t deserve to die, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to care about her the way I cared about, say, John Wick’s dog or the titular character in Mandy.
Thankfully though, the bad guys in Sayara more than make up for Yonja’s deficiencies. As I already mentioned, the gym owner cheats on his wife with several women, and he’s not exactly a gentleman to his paramours. To his credit, he doesn’t actually participate in Yonja’s murder, but he doesn’t try to stop it either. He lets his friends do whatever they want to the poor woman, so he’s just a horrible person all around.
However, compared to his friends, this man seems like a saint. From the moment we meet these hoodlums, it’s clear that they have absolutely no qualms about hurting or even killing people to get what they want, so even before they butcher Sayara’s sister, you can’t help but despise them. Then, when they show the true depths of their depravity, you’ll want to reach into the screen and tear them apart yourself. See, they don’t just kill Yonja. They take advantage of her sexually as well, so when Sayara finally lets loose, you’ll be totally on board with her murderous rampage.
And let me tell you, that rampage is brutal. Given Sayra’s background, I thought this movie was going to feature tons of cool martial arts action, but it doesn’t. This woman doesn’t mess around when she goes after people, so if you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was a slasher flick. Instead of extended fight scenes, we mostly get short, explosive kills that would make Michael Myers proud, and writer/director Can Evrenol revels in making these deaths as gory and as bloody as possible.
It’s only in the final 15 minutes or so that we get any real fights, but even then, they don’t last very long. They’re little more than glorified kill scenes, and one of them is particularly brutal. I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll just say that it showcases a genuinely animalistic savagery. It’s actually a bit shocking, but given how dark Sayara’s rage is, it fits this story perfectly.
Last but not least, I want to say a few words about the acting in Sayara. It’s pretty good all around, but one performance stands head and shoulders above the rest. Duygu Kocabiyik plays the titular character, and she’s fantastic from beginning to end. In fact, it’s almost like she has two different roles.
When the film starts, Sayara pretty much embodies the stereotype of a humble, unassuming worker. The woman just keeps her head down and does what she’s told, and she speaks to her boss with an almost childlike meekness. But when she finds out about Yonja’s death, it’s like someone flips a switch in her brain. You can just about see the fury oozing from every pore in her body, so she seems more like a T-800 Terminator than a human being. She’s a completely different person than the one we initially met, and Duygu Kocabiyik completely nails both sides of this complex character.
It’s a genuinely impressive lead performance, and when you combine it with the detestable villains and slasher-esque violence, you get one hell of a good time. Sure, Sayara isn’t the martial arts extravaganza I thought it would be, but that’s okay. This film still quenched my thirst for brutal vengeance, and at the end of the day, that’s all I really wanted from it.
Sayara played at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival on October 18.
