Movie Reviews

“Azrael” Will Leave You Speechless, Not For The Right Reasons | Review

In horror films, it is essential to have dialogue. This conclusion is not so evident because some of the most classic and successful horror films were produced in the silent film era. Besides, in recent years, several films have reduced dialogue to a minimum for plot or artistic reasons. You can find many differences between them. In certain films, we saw the need to be as quiet as possible as an integral part of the plot because any sound can kill. These movies, such as “A Quiet Place” or “Don’t Breathe, ” were compelling and suspenseful. In other, more extreme films, we saw almost no dialogue. After watching “Azrael,” the new horror film starring Samara Weaving, I think letting the words out has more disadvantages than advantages.

“Azrael” is a combination of a horror film, some would say apocalyptic (and we will get to that later), with quite a bit of action, scary creatures, and one fabulous Samara Weaving. It’s also well-made for the most part. Still, the decision to have a film with almost no dialogue hurts our ability to understand what the hell is going on here, our identification with the characters, and several other parameters, without which the film could have been much more successful and memorable. Confused? You’re welcome to read the following review of “Azrael.”


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Azrael Name Meaning: Who The Hell Is Azrael?

Even before watching the movies, the first question you may ask is who is this Azrael who appears in the film’s title, a name I’ve already heard in several contexts. To put it simply, Azrael (or Azriel, which means “God Has Helped”) is a “very senior” appointed angel in the upper heavens. He appears as the name of a person in some of the later books of the Bible, while in Islam, he is the canonical angel of death. You may have come across the news a few years ago with the name “Abu Azrael,” a muscular soldier known as the “Iraq’s Rambo,” partly because of a video he uploaded in which he burned an ISIS captive alive and then “chopped him up like shawarma.” Or maybe you remember the name “Azrael” from Kevin Smith’s excellent comedy film “Dogma” as some demon played by Jason Lee, or as a superhero in the DC Cinematic Universe. So, who the hell is this Azrael who got his horror movie?

I wasn’t supposed to write the last paragraph, including information I took from Wikipedia and a few news sites. Because when you watch a movie, you expect to understand its backstory adequately without having to “go outside” and ask Google.

Such explanations are pretty much absent from the horror film “Azrael.” The plot here, if you can call it that, takes place somewhere – the film was shot mainly in Estonia, with most of the crew, including the cinematographer, being local workers. The film also takes place at some point in time, which, as far as I understand, is after The Rapture – According to Christianity, especially evangelical Christianity, a sudden event in which Jesus will appear in heaven and cause all believing Christians and those who remain alive to ascend to heaven. That is, if I understood correctly from Wikipedia and a few articles on the subject I read on Google because the movie doesn’t explain its backstory.


Samara Weaving in "Azrael"
Apparently, the plot is related to something religious. Samara Weaving from “Azrael” (IFC Films)

In the world where “Azrael” takes place, if you look at the official credit list that appears on websites like IMDB, Azrael is the name of the heroine (horror icon Samara Weaving, “Ready or Not,” “The Babysitter,” “Mayhem,” and a small role in “Scream 5”). She lives in the forest with other survivors who remained on Earth even after that ascension.

There is some cult that, for some reason, believes that speech is a sin, which causes them to remove the vocal cords of the cult members (and probably other people as well) so that they can only communicate in sign language or mainly by whistling. Oh, and according to the general plot description, there are also monstrous humanoid creatures, whose name is “The Burned Ones,” and they feed on human flesh.


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Azrael Plot Summary

If we go back to the plot of the film, then according to my sources, it seems that for some reason, the cult decided to persecute Azrael and her black boyfriend (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett from the new and rather unnecessary adaptation of “Candyman”) and sacrifice them for some reason to the flames.

Luckily, Azrael manages to escape, and we follow her journey of survival against the monsters and against the members of the cult, especially Josephine (Estonian Katariina Unt) and the pregnant Miriam (Danish Vic Carmen Sonne), who is probably pregnant because she looks like she is in pregnant, and at some point, she gave birth to a monstrous baby. Along the way are Christian hints, which we are perhaps supposed to connect to try to understand something or give the film a religious and theological meaning.

The trailer of “Azrael” gives us a look at the atmosphere:

Maximum Questions, Minimum Answers

The truth is that describing the plot of the film “Azrael,” as you probably understood, is not a simple thing. Luckily, there are Google, Wikipedia, and other online information sites. It is possible to glean a few minimal hints between the lines.

The film mainly includes subtitles that don’t contribute much information but try to create an atmosphere. Surprise, it also has just a few lines of dialogue: after something like 36 minutes, when a passerby picks up our Azrael and asks her a few questions in the international Esperanto language – a language developed in the 19th century by a Polish Jewish doctor named L. L. Zamenhof. This same Zamenhof wanted to make Esperanto a heartwarming language that would be everyone’s second language (in addition to their mother tongue). There should be about 2 million Esperanto speakers worldwide, but I am not among them.

Luckily, I saw the film with subtitles (yes, for about five lines of dialogue). The film’s trivia page on IMDB also stated precisely what the guy said in Esperanto, so finally, we got dialogue – well, actually a monologue – that mainly showed that there were still a few people left in the film’s post-apocalyptic world who knew how to drive, talk, and play music in the car. It’s a shame his screen time is about a minute because he probably talked too much for this movie.

“Azrael” is not a bad survival film at all. It’s shot interestingly, the creatures look good and a little scary, and it has some thriving scenes, which combine gore and even a certain tension regarding the fate of the heroine, which reminded me in some ways of the excellent “The Descent” from 2005, one of the best horror films of the 2000s. The main problem is that the film loses momentum without context. It doesn’t have the constant claustrophobic fear of “The Descent” nor the tension of the “A Quiet Place” films.


Samara Weaving in "Azrael" (IFC Films)
Killings with no context. Samara Weaving in “Azrael” (IFC Films)

The film raises many questions, and in the absence of dialogue and a tighter script, it has difficulty explaining its inner world to us – and hence the actions of the villains or heroine. This requires the viewer to glean information from every possible source.

Take the creatures, for example, showing why some aspects of the “Azrael” plot are poorly explained, if any. Even after watching the film, I didn’t understand how they came into being, their goal, their main features, how they hunt, and so on. In a specific scene, the monsters stroll as if they were in a zombie fashion show but then run at impressive speed. Sometimes, the creatures are only attracted to noise or blood, but in other cases, they seem to be moving towards something static, which they may be seeing. When viewers see one of “The Burned Ones” doing something, and then in the following scenes, something else seemingly unrelated or contradictory, we lose the film’s internal logic.

Want another example? Please! Throughout the film, we learn that the mysterious cult, whose members love to whistle, shake their heads like bobbleheads, or do breathing exercises, wants to sacrifice Azrael to the creatures. The viewer has to try to figure out why. Is it because he broke a particular rule? Maybe it concerns her (alleged or not) romantic relationship with a black man? Or are the cult members descendants of the le Domas family from “Ready or Not,” who are still hunting down the same Grace (Samara Weaving, of course) who escaped from them the night heads exploded? Dear Azrael, I was hoping we’d see Ghostface emerge from the trees at one point because I already felt like casting Samara Weaving in “Scream 5” and then killing her off in the opening scene was a crime. It’s like adding Messi to your team and replacing him after one minute of play.


“eyes. Samara Weaving and one of The Burned Ones in Azrael (IFC Films)

Thank God We Have Samara

Beyond the breathtaking beauty, Samara Weaving is an excellent actress. She showed she is charismatic, tough, and has a not-so-bad sense of comedy. All you need is to know how to utilize her skills, and here it doesn’t exactly happen, not at all through her fault. She does everything and tries to convey many feelings through her looks and, of course, those mesmerizing blue eyes: toughness, fear, love, worry, and so on.

But there is a limit to what even the talented Samara Weaving can do without saying a word without “meat” to work with, and of course the other names of the “Azrael” cast, getting minimal screen time. Ultimately, the film presents minimal emotions for the characters, which is not always transmitted to the viewer. There were times when I imagined I recognized her pleading looks at the director, or if only they had shown us the original raw footage of the film, we would have heard her immediately after the cut shouting something like, “Jesus Christ, you drive me crazy! Let me talk, for God’s sake! I’m a great actress!”.



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If the film had progressed successfully even without dialogue (and between us, we’ve seen silent horror films that did it brilliantly), or if there had been a better plot explanation, I might have been more forgiving. But in reality, I felt, like many others, that the lack of dialogue hurt not only the viewer’s ability to understand what was happening before their eyes but also their ability to understand the heroine and identify with her and what she was going through. That’s why the film began to lose momentum quite quickly, a chase scene after another, sometimes out of context. There were scares and violent scenes here and there, but not ones that could hold a film together. “Azrael” even felt a bit long – a problematic fact for a movie that only lasted about 80 minutes.

In other words: “Azrael” did not convince me that the lack of dialogue was necessary and that it contributed to the film. Some would say that it even became a kind of gimmick, in a very similar way to the somewhat streaky “No One Will Save You” from 2023, where we also saw a heroine (Kaitlyn Dever) fighting for her life – this time against aliens – with almost no dialogue. This is detrimental to our ability to understand the heroine’s past (in this film, the past is very significant) or even the “rules” regarding aliens. So this time, there are monstrous creatures and not aliens, and the location is a forest and not an isolated house, but the problems are the same.


If these eyes could talk more. Samara Weaving in "Azrael" (IFC Films)
If these eyes could talk more. Samara Weaving in “Azrael” (IFC Films)

The Bottom Line: Should You Watch Azrael?

“Azrael” was reportedly produced on a 12 million-dollar budget. The film was directed by E.L. Katz (“Cheap Thrills,” “The ABCs of Death,” “Small Crimes”), based on a script by the talented Simon Barrett, who has several pretty significant films behind him (“You’re Next,” “The Guest,” the “Blair Witch” remake, “Godzilla X Kong: A New Empire,” and the very likable “Seance,” which he also directed). It had much greater potential with such experienced names and one Samara Weaving.

E.L. Katz shows some impressive skill, plus a love for the genre. Horror fans may recognize several references to other films in it: for example, the opening title that is reminiscent of “The Shining” or elements that correspond closely to the excellent “Rosemary’s Baby” (no spoilers!). The film looks impressive in cinematography, atmosphere (at least in parts), monster design, and rather complex production (they say they built an artificial moon here). On the negative side, it lacks most of what can make a film truly memorable: a consistent plot, tension that gradually builds to its climax, empathy, fear for the protagonists’ fate, and so on.


Great premise, but loses the plot. From “Azrael” (IFC Films)

This may be why the film, released in theaters in a minimal (but still reasonable) way, grossed a meager profit of just over $600,000 worldwide. Today, this isn’t necessarily terrible because many films are already intended for home viewing or are quickly reaching digital. Still, some of the potential audience may vote with their feet here.

“Azrael” is far from a bad film, but it has too many problems to make it one of the standouts in the horror genre in 2024, or even in Samara Weaving’s filmography. Does anyone know when “Ready or Not 2” is supposed to hit the screens?


Azrael – Everything You Need to Know

Year: 2024

Director: E.L. Katz

Actors: Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne,  Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Katariina Unt

Screenplay: Simon Barrett

Length: 86 minutes

Country of production: United States, Estonia

Language: Nada! Well, there are some English subtitles and a few lines spoken in Esperanto

Release date (theatrical): March 9, 2023

Budget: Approximately $12 million

Worldwide Gross: Approximately $666,000 (according to Box Office Mojo)

MPAA rating: R

Review score:

IMDB: 5.4

Rotten Tomatoes: 73%

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