A month or two back during a film festival, this was the film I was most looking forward to seeing. From the director of the Turkish horror "Baskin", a film I liked well enough, inspite of a few weak spots and stretched out storytelling. Anyway it was Can Evrenol's audaciously hypnotic vision, and explosively violent and nerve wracking horror set-pieces from his debut feature that had me curious to what he would do next. Housewife follows his previous film's story structure very much to a tee... in rocking your senses. A gothic, slow-grinding fable of mind-bending subconscious dreams fusing together with stark, cold reality. This gradual build-up of cultish zealotry, underlining sexual yearning and haunting dreamlike visions implodes into a sinuously conniving final third of occult debauchery, doomsday preaching and cosmic horror of Lovecraftian proportions.
However, while the backend imagery are creative and striking - the jubilee of violence are not as gory, nor even as rampant. There's still a frenzied craziness in what is happening in its climax. Steering closer to something startlingly bizarre, yet stylishly disciplined in its fiendish acts. Still, in saying that, their are few disturbing illustrations and the odd graphic jolt, but here, Evrenol used the surreal story to build towards and complement the delirious horror scenes than the other way around.
In some ways I might actually prefer "Housewife". In how it went about setting up and delivering on it's one, two punch. It flows better, and the shocks don't have a tacked on impression. Think of the suspicious, and paranoid build-up of a Polanski film, where instead it's very dark, and surreal in its laborious reality morphing into a disorientating dreamscape. Is it all in her head, as nightmares never felt so real? We watch the female lead stumble through a daze of confusion and fear, thinking her troubles, and past demons are cured when she seeks guidance from a necromantic showbiz psychic (perfectly done by David Sakurai) who believes he is destined to help her, but it's just the beginning of things to come as he starts getting into her head. The path that's chosen for her, from possible pacts made by her own family, or tainted blood, shows these deities never forget. The fervid opening of the film, which grabs you by the throat squeezing real tight, sets up the inherited guilt and fear stemming from her childhood that haunts her throughout adult life. The crafty camerawork, moody lighting and wailing synths/ambient pianos play a big part in shaping the swirling discomfit. Or I can see it being labeled as glossed up trash.
Where I think the film is let down, similar to Baskin, is the depth of its story and emotional engagement of its characters. This is mainly pointed at Clementine Poidatz and Ali Aksoz's characters, as Sakurai's presence needed to be mystifying. Possibly even having the Turkish actors speaking English rather than their native tongue can come across looking uneven, or stiff in their emoting delivery. While it does have a streamlined narrative with what seems like a lot going on, everything does comes across distant and less than skin deep. At times it did some things differently with its fascinating mythos, but the typical genre staples found in these cult stories can make its way into the story, for better or worse.
"Housewife" again shows the director's ambitious visionary prowess, and an ability to formulate reactions from his spectacular bookended set-pieces, whereas the spotty material might have its issues, it still showed glimpses that this latest effort is a step in the right direction. I'll probably end up liking this more than most would.
