04 January 2018

The Sword of Damocles


UNDER THE SHADOW (B-minus) - During the last days of the Iran-Iraq war, a woman in  Tehran strives to protect her young daughter during an exodus from the capital amid a bombing campaign. This debut feature from Babak Anvari devolves into a horror story about maternal instincts and the unremitting power of the militaristic patriarchy.

Then again, this could be just another scary movie about a little girl and her missing doll. Narges Rashidi stars as Shideh, a frustrated wife and mother who has been driven from medical school because of her activism in the wake of Iran's 1979 revolution. After her doctor husband goes off to war and her neighbors start fleeing the city (especially after an unexploded bomb crashes through the roof of the apartment building), Shideh is left alone with her daughter, Dorsa (Avin Manshadi), who has developed a serious fever that coincides with the girl's hysteria over losing her beloved rag doll.

Shideh's husband occasional checks in from the front lines by phone, a disembodied voice that sounds like it's coming from the afterlife. Dorsa insists that her mother has tossed away the doll, though there are ghost-like figures that swirl about the building who might have had something to do with the doll-napping. A creepy neighbor boy, too.

Shideh is a modern woman who prefers not to wrap herself in scarves to hide the body that she sculpts with the help of forbidden Jane Fonda workout VHS tapes. At one point, mother and daughter flee their building in fright and run into a couple of patrolmen who haul Shideh in for being scandalously uncovered. ("What are we, in Europe now?" one of them scolds.) Her detention at the hands of the theocrats is brief, and it's back to the haunted house.

Too much here is scattered, by-the-numbers spookiness and terror, somewhat reminiscent of a much tauter and scarier motherhood freakout, "The Babadook." There's not a plainly rational reason why Shideh won't take Dorsa to a safe place, besides the fact that she apparently doesn't want to hang out with her in-laws.

Rashidi is a compelling presence, and the jumps and jips will keep you on your toes. If only it didn't feel as dated as the Iran-Iraq war during the videotape era.

BONUS TRACK
The trailer:


 

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