For just about the past decade I feel Samara Weaving has earned the title of scream queen in the horror genre. She may not be a box office name like Jenna Ortega, but I feel Samara Weaving has a more impressive resume of cool and fun horror films, and she just consistently delivers. Ready or Not in a lot of ways is the film that best showcases her talents, and I thought for sure she’d level up to A-list status, but it seems the movie gods have other plans for her. Thankfully she is still cranking out some fun films for genre fans. Azrael is Weaving’s newest dip into the horror genre, a film that was written by Simon Barrett, who previously wrote the horror gems You’re Next and The Guest, and to sweeten this ghoulish cinematic pot, it is directed by E.L. Katz, who directed the 2013 dark comedy Cheap Thrills. Does this all add up to another genre hit, or is this a dud?
The film takes place several years after the rapture, and with most of the world’s population decimated, the few who remain no longer speak. When the film opens up, we see Azrael (Samara Weaving) and a male companion in the forest just enjoying their life until it is interrupted by a group of marauders who capture Weaving. Azrael is then restrained at a shrine in the woods and is left as a sacrifice to these charred undead creatures, but Azrael manages to escape, and what follows is a long cat-and-mouse game through the forest as she tries to elude the creatures and the marauders who initially captured her.
While I can appreciate that the film was attempting to do something different with having its characters not speak, it is extremely frustrating when you want to know who these people are. They easily could have had the characters use sign language and have subtitles to fix this, but instead they went with whistling. The silence of this film is effective at times, but at the same time it nearly lulled me to sleep, which a horror film shouldn’t be doing. What’s even more frustrating is knowing Barrett is pretty good at writing dialog and creating interesting fleshed-out characters, but none of that is here, and aside from the premise and a unique third act, there just isn’t much for the director or cast to work with.
Weaving has been in this role before where she is taking on a group of many as she fights for her life. What’s missing, though, is that her charm and wit never get to be seen in this role. It could easily have been played by anyone, and that can be said about every role in this; nothing stands out. This mostly felt like maybe it was a rejected The Walking Dead script episode idea that just got reworked. The dystopian world created just isn’t all that interesting, and just everything seemed like it wasn’t fully fleshed out. This pretty much could have been a student film and been more impressive, because aside from the names attached to the film, I just don’t see how this could have cost much to make.
The lack of dialog and the setting mostly being in the woods just seems like this film was not a good fit for director E.L. Katz, who typically thrives with character-driven narratives. The camera work is serviceable, but what I felt was missing throughout most of this film was atmosphere and tension. This does somewhat change when the film reaches the third act and the film becomes a bit of a bloodbath, and while I liked this portion, it just had me wishing we had more of it earlier in the film.
What I do find interesting is that this year we’ve gotten three horror films that heavily focus on religion and pregnant women (The First Omen, Immaculate, and Azrael). Before seeing any of these three films, I would have expected Azrael to be the film to outshine the others, but instead it just mostly fell flat for me.
Azrael is streaming now exclusively on Shudder.
