Review of Baskın (2013) by Davey K — 02 Feb 2018

"70 percent of Turkish men lose their virginity by fucking an animal, haven't you served in the army, son?" A comedic line like this, in the beginning of what may seem like a stylish horror film using long take aesthetic to truly instill a sense of dread, is sure to boomerang back and lodge deep in parts of your body that you didn't know existed until a tiny Marlon Brando inspired freak from Apocalypse Now slices them open and sucks on the mouth of your incision.

The first half of Baskin plucks feathers from Mulhulland Drive, Inception and Hellraiser; it's the psychological meat of the movie that will (maybe) keep you watching through all of the wonderfully colored and costumed androgynous gore.

The second half, besides being a total gore fest at a stomach churning Black Mass, gives us several examples of how "hard men" react when they're thrown against and chained to the brick pillars of the unknown; and the repetition of the little monster saying "this hell that is always within us" is fat pair of lips mouthing "fuck-you" to the idiots who believe in a place called hell like there's something more painful and sinister than life itself.

Like many slashers, this one isn't pro-women, seeing as the one woman with any significant screen time is chained up in a horned mask and grass skirt and only exists to be the vessel where the recently blinded men can prove that they've "opened the eyes of their heart", aka she only exists for ritualized sex acts.

If this dream inspired, multi dimensional film were a sculpture it'd be fading somewhere between a double helix and a Mobius strip. If there's a moral to this story it's that nothing is more evil than New Age spirituality.