Baskin: La porta dell'inferno

I'd had my eye on this movie for over a year. Constantly checking to see if, when, and where it was getting released. The first trailer for it immediately hooked me, and I needed to see this movie. Now I finally have, and I can safely say the wait was worth it. With what little reviews are even out there at this point, critics and keyboard warriors are complaining that Baskin is 'low on plot'. Hearing that as a complaint really grinds my gears. See, there are some movies that are just devoid of enough creativity to generate an interesting plot, and then there are other movies like Baskin, that are that way by design. If you don't like the movie... fine. But, it's REALLY well made.

The 'low on plot' complaint gets more absurd the more I think about it because so many masterful and classic movies have threadbare plots and nobody even bats an eyelash. In fact, they praise how it does so much with so little. Where's THAT love for Baskin? Writer and director Can Evernol has crafted a wonderfully nightmarish movie that seems to understand the very fabric of a bad dream- a dream you keep trying to wake up from and can't. Baskin makes enough sense from scene to scene that you can follow the narrative as a movie, but there are enough plot threads and details that stick out to give the movie a thoroughly dreamlike quality.

It dives in and out of deeper dream realms, characters deliver spooky speeches about fate and death. The camera fetishizes details that look irrelevant, so your eyes are drawn in, scouring the scene for clues or hints or something lurking in the shadows. Every scene is atmospheric and moody, giving the movie an uneasy vibe even when not much is really happening. The movie has a simple plot, but that doesn't mean it's a simple movie. It leaves a lot open to your imagination, but not in the way you might think. That concept when married to horror movies usually means that the killers or the monster isn't ever really seen, or that all the gory stuff happens off screen. Neither is true of Baskin.

It lets you use your imagination when it comes to the story. There's obviously a much bigger and more complex history to the antagonists of this movie, and thinking about what that might be is just as unnerving and scary as watching them kill their victims. And, speaking of victims, by the time our protagonists, a team of five police officers, happen to stumble across their lair, an old abandoned police station- we can clearly see they've been at this for a while. This small cult has killed dozens and dozens of people in extremely brutal and ritualistic manners. Also, I've got to give props to the filmmakers for creating one of the most disturbing looking cults I've ever seen.

Especially the perfect casting of the cult leader in Mehmet Cerrahoglu. Now, obviously, that name won't mean much to most audiences because this is Mehmet's first and only screen credit. But... oh my god. His performance was deeply unsettling and extremely disturbing. I can see a bright (or dark..?) future for him in horror movies. He's like a new Michael Berryman, and I say that with as much love and fondness for this genre and the actors in it as humanly possible. He stole the whole show away from the well established leads up to that point. Mehmet had dynamic and chilling on screen presence.

A lot of Can Evernol's inspirations are readily apparent to genre fans. Clive Barker, Eli Roth, David Lynch, and Nicolas Winding Refn- to name just a few. He manages to blend an eerie Euro art-house vibe with a hardcore splatter flick vibe. Actually, no- scratch that. He doesn't blend them- he does something a lot riskier. The first half of the movie is eerie Euro art-house cinema, and the second half of the movie smashes in, rubbing our faces in the anxiety inducing, gross- out, extreme gore, of your (above) average splatter flick. Baskin might not be the bloodiest or most insane movie ever, but just because I- as a genre fan, am jaded as hell, doesn't mean I can't recognize it for the demented and wild ride that it is.

It's a sick and haunting movie that is more concerned with moods and instantly disturbing imagery than it is with backstory and plotting. The necessary story bits are told through the characters and their interactions, and that was fine to me. I liked that aspect of the movie. Baskin succeeds overall, but excels in leaving you with memorable images of things the average person wouldn't ever want to see, let alone have it stuck in their head. Baskin doesn't look cheap, or low budget. It's immersive and gritty, and it's readily apparent flaws can be chalked up to differing tastes and opinions. Some people like more plot-heavy horror movies, so obviously they might be let down by Baskin a bit, but that doesn't mean it's thin plot is a flaw.

In retrospect, the movie does feel rather small. It only really has three locations, a restaurant, a highway, and the old not-so-abandoned police station. What makes it feel small is how little actually happens in each location. The movie milks each second it can out of every setting it has, and it's surprisingly effective. In lesser hands, this movie would've been an absolute misfire. But, as is, it's a slick and well made piece of gore-splatter cinema. It's moody cinematography, vibrant colors, and synth heavy score bring to mind an extra bloody and Satanic spun Wrong Turn by way of Nicolas Winding Refn. I couldn't say that like it's a bad thing even if I tried. Baskin is destined for overnight cult status, and genre immortality. I loved it.

I saw the premise of the film and was interested. Adding to my interest was the fact that the film was foreign. I was curious what a Turkish horror movie would look like.

The movie starts out with an amazing film score that sets this tone for an early 80s euro giallo style.

It takes a while for the Horror to begin as we watch a group of cops go through some strange events before the real deal goes down.

And when the horror sneaks up to ya, it's very freaky and deranged, almost torture porn like. It made me squirm in my seat.

I must admit that overall I thought the movie was far too corny. It could be the culture gap, or it could be the Tarantino like built up to the horror with a lot of dialog, that may have been more interesting in the native language.

Can't really say that I like it all that much, though it made me uncomfortable, it was not in a scary way.

A twisted, surreal & nightmarish journey into the bottomless depths of hell, Baskin is an extremely disturbing, utterly unusual & overly ambitious tale that feels like something that came straight out of the abyss and, thanks to its stomach-churning violence & gore as well as multitudes of themes & symbolisms, it isn't an easy film to decipher in one sitting.

The story of Baskin follows a squad of five police officers who, after dining in a restaurant, receive a distress call from a nearby town and head there to investigate the issue. But once they reach the crime scene, an abandoned building that used to be a police station during the Ottoman era, they find themselves inexplicably trapped in a world of madness & suffering.

Co-written & directed by Can Evrenol in what is his feature film debut, Baskin is adapted from his short film of the same name and is one phantasmagorical ride from start to finish that's as bizarre as it is bewildering. The plot is filled with flashbacks & dream sequences and in between lies some real nasty stuff as well that's definitely not for the easily-distressed.

Each frame of it is instilled with a foreboding sense of doom and its dilapidated sets, sophisticated yet eerie camera-work, shaded colour tones, steady pace & stimulating score, all contribute greatly in enhancing its overall impact, and is all the more amplified by the gruesome brutality that Evrenol puts on the screen, for the level of violence that's on display here is absolutely sickening.

Performances are good even if the characters aren't that well-defined. More than individual inputs, it's the chemistry between the five actors that makes their characters believable. But nobody even holds a candle to the performance that comes later in the story from a first-time actor. Playing the antagonist, Mehmet Cerrahoglu chips in with a show-stealing work and makes for one intimidating villain.

On an overall scale, Baskin is one of the most shocking, disturbing & emotionally upsetting films of the year that's drenched in dread, revels in suffering & bathes in body horror. The labyrinth-like structure of its plot does go over the head sometimes but there is still an intriguing quality to it that keeps the interest alive until the very end. A convoluted mess but also an undeniably powerful experience, this Turkish horror about five cops who inadvertently wander into hell isn't for everyone. Enter at your own risk.

In BASKIN, the horror starts right away with an opening straight out of childhood nightmares.

The scene switches to five cops hanging out in a diner. There's something just not right about the place, and some disturbing things occur without the knowledge of these policemen. A building sense of dread and uneasiness sets in before anything even happens. It's established immediately that these guys are hardened characters who have probably "seen it all". These are NOT the cops you want to pull you over in the middle of the night!

Upon leaving the diner, there's a call for backup on the van radio. The creep-factor continues to rise, as incidents take place which have no plausible explanation. Then, some unearthly line is somehow crossed, and away we go! The best way to describe what transpires next, is a collective nightmare interrupted by spurts of semi-reality. Arriving at their destination, the weirdness only gets... weirder! Entering a decrepit mansion, the true madness begins. If you've ever wondered what a fun house in hell's sub-basement would be like, well, here it is!

BASKIN is genuinely scary and completely messed up. Ultimately, it's a terrifying tale of supernatural retribution and doom. There is plenty of gore and degradation for these men, but what makes the movie so blood-freezing is the atmosphere of total malevolence that it conjures. True wickedness. Without this, BASKIN would be just another mindlessly debauched splatter film. By the time you reach its finale, you'll know what I mean...

Baskin comes from a country for which horror genre outings are quite atypical to see. Despite not having much to compare with locally, it is clearly a passionate and well-made horror even when examined against countries that contribute to the genre much more frequently. Not terrific, but a great start to a young filmmaker's career.

The film is about a set of five cops who are patrolling their neighbourhood at night. They receive a call for backup coming from a part of town associated with many fantastic and far-fetched story. Upon entering it, they find themselves in a place none other than Hell.

I was quite entranced by Can Evrenol's direction, it was surprisingly confident for a first feature, daring to aim for difficult scenes and set-ups right off the bat. The opening 15 minutes in the restaurant were my favourites. They use numerous very long, very slow takes, which captured a sense of slow building dread despite the hilarious conversation going on between the cops. His flair for beauty and the abstract persists later on as well, especially in scenes where he combines multiple perceptions of reality (loved the room filling up with water). I am definitely a fan of his after seeing this movie.

I do think that the first third of the film is its strongest, because oh the sense of undefined dread. Once the cops enter "hell", the movie is still entertaining but becomes more of a torture-porn outing, without that much story. I like the reference to the mythological hellish trials and tribulations from Greek mythology, but I would have preferred a stronger plot. The circular reference of the film kind of bothered me, because it is an extremely common trope of "characters in limbo/hell" movies (like House Hunting, Haunter, etc), and I would have liked to see something more original.

The acting was quite fantastic for the budget. All of the cops did a great job, the likable ones managed to be truly likable, the hateable ones easily made themselves repulsive to the viewer. The physically "unique" actor who played the master of the hell domain was very creepy and good in his role, with zero prosthetics to boot! Great casting choice.

Overall, Baskin could have used improvements in terms of storytelling, but it is absolutely worth seeing as a piece of horrific art, morbidly beautiful to watch. 7/10