Azrael (2024)

kroenen

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Title: Azrael (2024)

Genre: Action, Horror

Director: E.L. Katz

Cast: Samara Weaving, Vic Carmen Sonne, Katariina Unt, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Rea Lest, Johhan Rosenberg, Karen Bengo, Lucie Jan, Phong Giang, Sebastian Bull Sarning, Eero Milonoff, Peter Christoffersen, Sonia Roszczuk

Release: 2024-09-27

Runtime: 85

Plot: Many years following the apocalypse, a devout cult of mute zealots hunts down a young woman, Azrael, who has escaped her imprisonment. Recaptured by its ruthless leaders, Azrael is to be sacrificed to pacify an ancient evil that resides deep within the surrounding wilderness – yet she will stop at nothing to ensure her own survival. In what follows, Azrael makes a savage bid for freedom as her escape accelerates towards a vicious, revenge-fueled showdown.
 

sliverstorm

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Solo girl ruthlessly enacts bloody violence on evil people who absolutely deserve it?

Animated GIF
 
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Dr.Retarded

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Solo girl ruthlessly enacts bloody violence on evil people who absolutely deserve it?

Animated GIF
I mean that's been a pretty overused trope, but I will say it looks pretty good. Maybe not super original but maybe it will be. I'll definitely be watching it when it comes to Shudder.
 
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Void

BAU BAU
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Samara Weaving is all you had to say. There's something about her that makes me enjoy just about everything she does. Besides her hotness.
 
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Breakdown

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Wow what a novel concept in 2024. A 110 pound woman fights the patriarchy that still exists post apocalypse. COOL FUCKING IDEA.
 
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sliverstorm

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Have you seen the original I Spit on Your Grave? Go all the way back to the birth of the rape/revenge archetype.
Only in clips as a classic because I'd heard so much about it. I remember thinking it was really bright and colorful in a striking way.

Stuff I'd throw in the general bucket that I enjoyed:

You're Next - great
Ready Or Not - great (also Samara Weaving)
Hush - great
Kill Bill 1/2 - I love Tarantino, so this one is a no-brainer
Revenge - pretty good
 
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Arbitrary

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Only in clips as a classic because I'd heard so much about it. I remember thinking it was really bright and colorful in a striking way.

Stuff I'd throw in the general bucket that I enjoyed:

You're Next - great
Ready Or Not - great (also Samara Weaving)
Hush - great
Kill Bill 1/2 - I love Tarantino, so this one is a no-brainer
Revenge - pretty good

Well, I can't call I Spit on Your Grave fun but she fucks those dudes up.
 
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Void

BAU BAU
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Very mediocre if you ask me. Thankfully it isn't actually a "Girl Boss Kicks Everyone's Ass" movie, and I love Samara Weaving, but...meh.

There is just not much interesting here. The most intriguing thing is that no one speaks due to The Rapture having happened and apparently some biblical reason that is never given. And it seems like it isn't just that they choose not to speak, but they literally cannot. People attempt to scream and can't make the sounds. However, we get a brief glimpse that there are people in the world that do actually speak, but these mutes can't understand them I guess because it is portrayed to us in gibberish sounds that are close to real language but not.

Nothing is explained. It doesn't necessarily need to be, but since it isn't, it has no real weight for us. Bad shit happens to her, obviously, but aside from her having to react to it, why do I care? I Spit On Your Grave was mentioned earlier in the thread, and while you could argue we don't have to care about the shit that happens to the main character of that movie either, we do, and we are invested in seeing her fuck the perpetrators up. And while their reasons might not be anything more than being shitty people, at least we comprehend why the bad guys are bad. In this, there is a hint of what is going on in the background, particularly when viewed in relation to the ending, but it still doesn't make much sense at all.

It feels like this is one chapter of a (old, drug fueled, actually still good) Stephen King novel where he goes down the rabbit hole of a particular character to give context to the greater novel, but then returns to the real story, never to revisit this one. I constantly use one part of The Stand as an example of his ability to create amazing characters for a brief moment; I barely remember anything about it now after all these years, but there is a little girl on an airplane that doesn't matter one bit to the overall story, but for one chapter we feel what that little girl feels and care about her, her thoughts and her life, as if she is an important character, but at the end of that chapter all that happens is that she was on the same plane as someone that was infected and she (along with millions of others now) is going to die. It was King's way of showing us how the virus spread, but in a significantly more interesting way than just saying people got on planes and passed it around the world. This movie is just like that chapter, except without the greater story around it to give it any context or meaning, because there is clearly a greater picture that someone dreamed up, we just never know what that was. And this is significantly less interesting than that chapter even, since within that chapter the little girl matters, has a life of her own that we care about and are invested in, and is relatable. In this movie, I just never cared why anything was happening or who it was happening to. If it were a random no-name actress I would say to avoid it entirely. Weaving is good, but it is one of those movies where you ask why it was even made.

Literally the only thing even remotely interesting is the very end. And since I'm pretty sure there will never be a sequel explaining what that ending means for everyone...who cares?

EDIT: While I was thinking about it, I should draw a comparison with a movie like Cloverfield. In that movie, we only see what the characters see; we don't get an explanation for where the monster came from, what it is, even what it looks like most of the time. Nothing is explained at all, and plenty of people hated it for that reason. That didn't bother me, as it was still a relatable movie in the sense that you could put yourself in the shoes of any of the characters and imagine being just as bewildered about what is going on. To me, that was actually well done and something that made the movie stand apart from other monster/kaiju movies. In Azrael, however, Weaving's character most likely knows a lot more about wtf is going on in the world (even if she doesn't know specifics about wtf the bad guys are up to), but we are never given that info. The Cloverfield kids were just as clueless as the audience was, so it worked. This movie, doesn't.
 
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Aazrael

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Very mediocre if you ask me. Thankfully it isn't actually a "Girl Boss Kicks Everyone's Ass" movie, and I love Samara Weaving, but...meh.

There is just not much interesting here. The most intriguing thing is that no one speaks due to The Rapture having happened and apparently some biblical reason that is never given. And it seems like it isn't just that they choose not to speak, but they literally cannot. People attempt to scream and can't make the sounds. However, we get a brief glimpse that there are people in the world that do actually speak, but these mutes can't understand them I guess because it is portrayed to us in gibberish sounds that are close to real language but not.

Nothing is explained. It doesn't necessarily need to be, but since it isn't, it has no real weight for us. Bad shit happens to her, obviously, but aside from her having to react to it, why do I care? I Spit On Your Grave was mentioned earlier in the thread, and while you could argue we don't have to care about the shit that happens to the main character of that movie either, we do, and we are invested in seeing her fuck the perpetrators up. And while their reasons might not be anything more than being shitty people, at least we comprehend why the bad guys are bad. In this, there is a hint of what is going on in the background, particularly when viewed in relation to the ending, but it still doesn't make much sense at all.

It feels like this is one chapter of a (old, drug fueled, actually still good) Stephen King novel where he goes down the rabbit hole of a particular character to give context to the greater novel, but then returns to the real story, never to revisit this one. I constantly use one part of The Stand as an example of his ability to create amazing characters for a brief moment; I barely remember anything about it now after all these years, but there is a little girl on an airplane that doesn't matter one bit to the overall story, but for one chapter we feel what that little girl feels and care about her, her thoughts and her life, as if she is an important character, but at the end of that chapter all that happens is that she was on the same plane as someone that was infected and she (along with millions of others now) is going to die. It was King's way of showing us how the virus spread, but in a significantly more interesting way than just saying people got on planes and passed it around the world. This movie is just like that chapter, except without the greater story around it to give it any context or meaning, because there is clearly a greater picture that someone dreamed up, we just never know what that was. And this is significantly less interesting than that chapter even, since within that chapter the little girl matters, has a life of her own that we care about and are invested in, and is relatable. In this movie, I just never cared why anything was happening or who it was happening to. If it were a random no-name actress I would say to avoid it entirely. Weaving is good, but it is one of those movies where you ask why it was even made.

Literally the only thing even remotely interesting is the very end. And since I'm pretty sure there will never be a sequel explaining what that ending means for everyone...who cares?

EDIT: While I was thinking about it, I should draw a comparison with a movie like Cloverfield. In that movie, we only see what the characters see; we don't get an explanation for where the monster came from, what it is, even what it looks like most of the time. Nothing is explained at all, and plenty of people hated it for that reason. That didn't bother me, as it was still a relatable movie in the sense that you could put yourself in the shoes of any of the characters and imagine being just as bewildered about what is going on. To me, that was actually well done and something that made the movie stand apart from other monster/kaiju movies. In Azrael, however, Weaving's character most likely knows a lot more about wtf is going on in the world (even if she doesn't know specifics about wtf the bad guys are up to), but we are never given that info. The Cloverfield kids were just as clueless as the audience was, so it worked. This movie, doesn't.
My Plex guy was waiting for subititles to come out for this before he downloaded it. Your post explains why it never got downloaded. :p
 
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Movie information in first post provided by The Movie Database