Zalava

Zalava

Director – Arsalan Amiri

Writers – Arsalan Amiri, Tahmineh Bahramalian, Ida Panahandeh

2021 – Iran

Stars – Navid Pourfaraj, Pouria Rahimi Sam

 

From the Glasgow Film Festival.

 If I was watching this at FrightFest or Grimmfest, I would have been more sure of where this was going. However, this Iranian drama dresses up in a horror clothing to speak of the dangers of superstitious and blind belief, and one can extrapolate to religious faith, in a way that feels bold in is lack of ambiguity. It's not shy about it's targets

1978: Massound is a gendarmerie sergeant sent to a village in Kurdistan to investigate complaints of being under siege by demonic possessions. But Massoud does not believe in such things, which puts him at odds with the townsfolk, especially when an exorcist gets involved. Soon, the general hysteria infuses every shadow, breeze, creak and empty pickle jar with supernatural potential, not tot mention the cute black cat cameo. The pickle jar is the central macguffin. And the audience will play into that too because, as this a film, anything is possible. The atmosphere is thick with portent and the location is fascinating, and we will not get so deep into the characters, although we don’t necessarily need to. The abstract nature of a person is part of the point.

Ryan Lattanzio calls it “slight”, perhaps with expectations of a more conventional horror. It felt to me more akin to the work of Aharon Keshales and Navot Papushado (see 'Big Bad Wolves'). When a film is the dangers of mob delusion, about the battle between the irrational and rational, I wouldn’t call it slight. Being about man’s hysteria and inclination for lynching, it’s more of a genuine horror than just the spookily inclined drama than I perhaps assumed.