Babak Anvari
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Connections, in both directions
While "Under the Shadow" has much in common with " The Babadook ," especially in its portrayal of shared sleep-deprivation in mother and child as well as an interior that morphs into a nightmarescape before our eyes, it is also reminiscent of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion," where grasping arms emerge from hallway walls suddenly, soft like clay, and gigantic cracks shiver across walls and ceiling.
Household items vanish, furniture is rearranged when there’s apparently no one there, and a symbolic crack in the plaster mirrors the family’s mental and spiritual undoing (shades of Polanski’s Repulsion).
Yet as with Polanski ’s Repulsion and The Tenant (which Anvari has cited as influential), such boundaries remain fluid and we are never dispossessed of the notion that Dorsa really is the target of wandering spirits, plotting to steal her away like her beloved doll, Kimia.
Movies like Dark Water , The Conjuring , and The Babadook have similarly sought to explore the psychology of motherhood in horror terms, and Under the Shadow is a strong addition to the mix.
Babak Anvari’s debut has been compared to Jennifer Kent’s phenomenal The Babadook, and genre fans should be excited to hear it’s not just because both films feature a difficult relationship between a mother and her child and a metaphor-laden supernatural foe.
Instead, "Under the Shadow" bears a closer similarity to "The Babadook," released the same year, which also focused on a mother protecting her kid from an an eerie, largely unseen figure who may or may not be a metaphor for psychological duress.
Under the Shadow is this year’s The Babadook.
But Anvari is merely controlling our expectations as he prepares his fright assault, putting a mother and child in the kind of psycho-supernatural peril that recalls any number of genre standouts, from Poltergeist to The Babadook.
To make a recent comparison (and to a film that also played at Sundance), Under the Shadow is similar to the The Babadook in that it’s not really about the monster; it’s about what the monster represents in the relationship between a mother and child.
Relic also offers a fresh take on the classic haunted house film, its use of metaphor reminiscent of Babak Anvari’s Under the Shadow .
In this way, I’m motivated to compare it to Iranian film Under The Shadow (2016), in the sense that it utilizes the frustratingly persistent norms of its national identity to recontextualize the more recognizable elements of the genre.
Hell, it isn’t even a real subversion a la 2016’s Don’t Breathe , but I Came By is just as dark.
To put it simply, “I Came By” is kind of a cross between “Summer of 84” and “Don’t Breathe.”