Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Who knew there are toilet spells???

DABBE was...absolutely refreshing in terms of horror fare. Unusual, original, authentic, wildly unpredictable, (which is difficult when one has been there done that in terms of every kind of nightmare film or book around...) and set in one of my favorite lands, Turkey. From the first few minutes you knew it was going to be good. Theres much to resonate with the Eastern horror fan that you dont find in any kind of Western fare ( including massive clumps of damp decompsing "drain" hair being vomited by people and decomposing cattle skulls- which I know is a thing in Sri Lanka because my husband said he had offers for the skulls of his family's buffaloe herd when they had got ill and died) ....this was absolutely fascinating for me, because previously Id always thought of ddjinns as rather standardised and regular...and Id never watched a film featuring a Muslim excorcist!!! Move over Nun, Polterguiest and frankly any other western fare, because this tradition was way more familiar, where I come from. DABBE is also, terrifyingly, based on actual events and Nadeesha and I had to dim down the audio because we didnt want any part of demons invocation in original biblical languages, to enter our living room! and turns out thats a good thing because I later learnt that some of the demon voices had been retrieved from actual tapes from the cases!!!....(For good measure we decided to play Buddhist prayers and watch a comedy afterwards, thats how effective it was!) Twelve out of ten in terms of halloween horror fare, although it lost a point or two for its exaggerated shaky cameramanship (Blair Witch style) which always makes me nauseous and is the reason I could never get on the computer games bandwagon...and also there were inexplicable and much maligned pythons at one point just put there to add effect to anyone with snake phobias which didnt work on us because we love reptiles...(naga ganaya anyone?) But.....overall,  if you want to be scared shitless and absolutely not know whats coming next and also be affected in a visceral way, this is a treat worth waiting for. What can I say, dont do this at home, alone ....

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