Didn't realize until after the fact that I was watching the fifth in a series, although I'm not sure it matters. Also, runtime is actually 2 hours and 12 minutes. Someone should probably fix that.
Anyway...
I had no idea what to expect going into this. I have seen a lot of horror films in my day but none from Turkey. Well, it actually is quite familiar in setting, set up, and tone to your average possession film. Swap Anytown, USA for Istanbul and a ghost for a djinn and you basically have this. Except not at all. Because this film is crazy. It toes a line between cheesy, with its overbearing and generic horror score and some OTP camerawork, and genuinely unsettling horror. Seriously, some of the scares in this got me more than anything I have seen in a long time. It conjures a lot of fear at first by teasing out little bits of horror and making your imagination run with it, before shoving the knife in, so to speak, with some disturbing uses of mirrors, dream sequences, and shadows. Some of the monstrous figures in this gave me shivers!
The performances are quite good. They really sell the horror and actually act like real people for the most part. The cinematography, while occasionally showy, is fantastic. The lighting is creative, the use of different lenses and formats to distort the frame and give it a dreamlike quality really add to the disorienting effect that Dilek feels throughout. I'm not sure how all of the visual effects were achieved, though I think a mix of in camera and CGI effects were used. Regardless, the whole thing has a very polished look that sucks you right into the world of the film. The narrative has a tendency to overexplain and the twist at the end felt really unnecessary, but overall was actually pretty damn gripping.
All in all, this was a really pleasant surprise. I might be inclined to check out the others in the series now!
