This spring, we unveiled our list of 12 Arthouse Horror Directors Who Are Reinventing The Genre, and making the cut was Babak Anvari. He’s the director behind “Under The Shadow,” which premiered at Sundance and has since become one of the most buzzed-about genre pictures of the year, hitting a slew of festivals including SXSW, New Directors/New Films, and Fantasia, where I recently saw the movie, and can affirm that it’s absolutely terrific. And the first trailer is here, and sets the table for the movie, without giving too much away.
READ MORE: 12 Arthouse Horror Directors Who Are Reinventing The Genre
Starring Narges Rashidi, Avin Manshadi, Bobby Naderi, Ray Haratian, and Hamidreza Djavadan, the movie takes place in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war. When a woman’s husband is called to the battlefield to serve as a medic, she’s left home to care for their young daughter. In a city that’s already running over with tension from the war, the stakes are raised when a bomb lands on the woman’s building. It doesn’t detonate, but instead, something far more fearsome is unleashed — a djinn.
It’s a terrific movie that oozes with dread and genuine scares, while also bringing it with some great subtext (the film is very much a metaphor for the psychological strains of war). “Under The Shadow” opens on October 7th.
