curated cinema: home is where the ill wind blows

Have a Daily Scream for your daily-streaming recommendation for spooky season! (Explore last year’s Daily Scream films.)

In a similar vein to The Babadook, my curated-cinema pick yesterday, 2016’s Under the Shadow sees a mother and child under siege from the supernatural in their own home. They’re living in Tehran under the strictures of the Islamic revolution and amidst the long Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and evil djinn, malevolent spirits, have arrived along with the unexploded missile that has landed in their apartment building.

British-Iranian filmmaker Babak Anvari made a stunning feature debut with this deeply creepy movie, weaving a sinister tapestry of urban unease and feminist fury that turns an ordinary domestic setting into a place of skulking terror. This is as fresh and as exhilarating as horror movies come.

(Read my 2017 review.)

US: stream on Netflix; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV

UK: stream on Netflix; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV

See Under the Shadow at Letterboxd for more viewing options, including in all other global regions.

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