Let’s check on mom.
I guess this is going to be a Turkish horror week.
Huddam comes up in searches for good Turkish horror, so I decided to give it a go. We follow a troubled family as the mother Derya begins exhibiting odd behavior shortly after her birthday. Her son Can, first tries a medical diagnosis, but when this fails, he turns to spiritual advisers. He must race against time before his mother is fully taken over by a dangerous demon.
The film is oddly constructed. We have a weird mix of found footage and single shot camera work. The found footage elements drop off about a third of the way through and don’t come back again, so why bother with them at all?
Where the construction is truly problematic is that the story does not make a lot of sense. The general idea of past sins and demonic possession are easy enough to grasp, but the specific details are too vague to make a lot of sense. I genuinely felt confused during a lot of this one because things simply didn’t add up. We aren’t given enough details about what is going on at any point.
Our lead hero, Can, is perhaps the most unlikable and dense protagonist I’ve seen in a quote un-quote adult horror film. He just yells at everyone and doesn’t seem to have a clue about what is going on. Funnily, his friend tags along just to be berated. The ultimate example of this is when one of the people from the church (or referred to by the church) says to prevent the demon from winning he might have to sacrifice himself. Can doesn’t seem to give a half of a fart that someone might die.
Story problems are annoying enough, but we also have odd framing of scenes. It feels too much like a film. Everyone faces the same direction. Everyone stays in frame (or at least tries to as the camera sometimes wanders). It just doesn’t work that well.
The worst part is the subtitles. Horrific errors, missing words, missing translations (long moments of nothing), and obviously cut down text probably made an already shaky story outright incomprehensible.
There are flashes of interesting moments, but without being able to speak Turkish and Arabic I don’t think the story is going to have any deeper meaning than a standard possession film. Sadly, there just isn’t much to see here.
Skip it.
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