What is horror? What is terror? What is it that scares you? Sometimes it’s the monster with the giant claws and red eyes that lives under the bed. Sometimes it’s the sounds of footprints behind you when you know you’re all alone. Sometimes it’s the presence of the dead which linger in an old house.
And sometimes it’s your everyday life – it’s what’s become commonplace around you.
Under the Shadow tells the story of a mother left to care for her young daughter in a war-torn Iran after her husband is drafted into service. One day the familiar sirens wail outside letting them know they need to race to the basement for safety as missiles careen toward Tehran. On their way downstairs the mother, Shideh, sends her daughter, Dorsa, to continue on towards the basement with a friend as she’s called upstairs by a frantic neighbor who’s father has stopped breathing.
When she makes it upstairs she finds the old man unresponsive in an armchair with an undetonated missile crashed through the ceiling resting a few feet away from him.
After that point, Dorsa and some other residents of the apartment building come to believe that with the missile came djinn - a preternatural creature of Islamic folklore which can interact with the human world and can be good, evil, or neutral.
One guess as to which one starts hanging around Shideh and her daughter.
It is following this point that Under the Shadow takes on many aspects of one of the most perfect horror films I’ve ever seen - The Babadook. Shideh is a woman unfulfilled, left to raise her child alone in a world which makes her feel like an outsider. She struggles to remain calm while the world outside her literally comes apart and ultimately finds herself face to face with whatever it is which has been haunting her and her daughter.
Under the Shadow is also frightening in the same way the The Babadook is frighting - it leaves something with you. When I was watching Under the Shadow I was tense but it wasn’t until the next day when I was unable to stop thinking about it that I came to appreciate how effective the movie was.
Under the Shadow also serves as an excellent piece of feminist horror. Now, understand that I don’t mean “feminism” in the sense of the dirty word it seems to have become. I mean feminism in its actual, true sense - it details a woman oppressed by her surroundings (in a very real sense) and her struggles to break those bonds.
Mild spoilers after image. Spoilers end after second image.
Perhaps the most powerful moment of the film for me was toward the end. In the middle of the night, Shideh is awoken by a presence in her bedroom. She is 100% positive that there is an intruder in her home. Clad in jeans, a tank top, cardigan, and barefoot, she frantically scoops up her daughter and runs outside, running down the road looking for help until she’s ultimately stopped by the police.
Rather than them questioning why this frightened woman is running barefoot down the road in the middle of the night with her child in her arms, they arrest her for “exposing” herself. At the police station, she is given chador to wear and continuously scolded and threatened with lashes for her actions.
The intruder in the house is never discussed.
That, friends, is terrifying.
And that’s only one example of how Under the Shadow makes for a great piece of feminist horror.
Overall, I was very surprised and intrigued by this film. While I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Babadook, I found it to be a well thought out, well paced, and refreshing horror movie. A movie which does an amazing job at finding the horror all around us rather than seeking it out at the bottom of a well or in the pages of the necronomicon.
Rating: 8/10
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