‘Azrael’ Review: A Silent Thriller That Needs More Volume
Samara Weaving keeps the blood count piling up in E.L Katz’s Azrael, but the film’s silent gimmick hampers its momentum.
Ever since John Krasinski gave us A Quiet Place, there has seemingly been a resurgence in dialogue-free cinema, from Brian Duffield’s catastrophically dull No One Will Save You to John Woo’s poetic Silent Night. Now, we can add E.L. Katz’s Azrael to that list, a lean-and-mean post-apocalyptic horror movie focusing on its titular (mute) protagonist (played by Samara Weaving) being hunted down by a cult of devil-worshipping zealots.
It's incredibly simple, perhaps too simple. Azrael gets kidnapped at the top of the film after her love interest (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) lights a fire, which attracts the wrong individuals. She is used by the cult as a vessel to feed a Zombie-like creature with an insatiable appetite for flesh. What the members don’t know is how fierce Azrael is, with a resolve to break free from their brainwashing, despite having ensured she will never speak again (the cult members each have the same scar). In that regard, the movie paints her quest for revenge in an unflinchingly violent lens, with Katz setting up numerous close-up shots of a character being literally eaten alive by the creatures.
One at the top of the film posits Azrael as an extremely rough watch – with a cult member’s throat being ripped out from the creature’s teeth and their head cut off. It’s boldly raw and holds nothing back, offering us silent thrills that No One Will Save You somewhat promised, but never fully delivered. Regarding its action sequences, Katz and cinematographer Mart Taniel craft impeccably cathartic bouts of violence that are always surprisingly effective. In that logic, the visual world of Azrael is also created, and it never breaks form, even during its spiritually charged ending that interestingly opens up the world writer Simon Barrett introduced in a way vastly different from how it was introduced in the movie.
And herein lies the film’s most significant flaw: the world is introduced. Since none of the characters speak, the world Barrett sets forward will automatically be ambiguous and focus on Azrael’s quest of escape. This is all fine, and one can perfectly understand the pain and repression our protagonist has felt while being in a cult that has constantly abused her just by looking at Weaving’s eyes. To be honest, many critics have vilified the film’s silent choice, because it removes the ass-kicking “last line” Weaving was known for as a final girl in Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Ready or Not.
However, Weaving more than holds her own here and delivers a fierce titular turn worthy of our attention. In fact, the film is worth seeing exclusively for her as a terrific showcase of emotional complexity. I’ve said this a thousand times in this publication, and others, but the most impressive aspect of any actor isn’t how they deliver dialogue (most can do in their sleep), but how they express diverse emotions with their facial expressions and, most importantly, their eyes. You know you’ve got a great actor on your hands if they can convey tangible, unadulterated feeling in front of the audience by saying absolutely nothing. Weaving is the only performer able to do this effectively in Azrael. None of the other actors are on the same level as her, and she’s the main reason we keep watching, despite Barrett’s multiple screenwriting inconsistencies.
As gripping as Azrael’s story is, the world introduced here severely lacks development, and interest. This is especially apparent when Katz imbues it with twisted spiritual imagery that posits this cult as a far bigger menace than a typical group of baddies. But Katz and Barrett never develop them further than disposable villains with paper-thin motivations, which ultimately makes it hard for us to truly attach ourselves to the events occurring on screen. With a mile-a-minute pace and a ridiculously short runtime, the filmmaker/screenwriter duo doesn’t allow its characters to feel like tangible humans and for the audience to bask in its post-apocalyptic setting featuring interestingly designed creatures with little to no bite beyond their pronounced teeth.
Sure, the violence gives Weaving her biggest on-screen catharsis yet, but there’s little to offer beyond intricately paced and choreographed bouts of inspired action. Because of this, Azrael may be significantly better than No One Will Save You as a dialogue-free horror movie but lacks the energy and development of a Ready or Not-type vehicle for Samara Weaving. Many people were cold on it, but John Woo’s Silent Night remains the best post-Quiet Place dialogue-less movie we currently have and one that will likely be reappraised as time becomes kinder to it.