HAGAZUSSA (2017)

5/21/19 - Hagazussa: A Heathen’s Curse (2017) - 6+/7-/10

A serene and darkly ominous meditation, letting the black blood of superstition and the unknown terrors of the oblivion creep into your pores. The tortured and painful existence of women on the bounds of civilization and understanding, hated for what they aren’t, not what they are. Something akin to The VVitch, but more of a haunted whisper and ghastly spectre on the edge of ones vision than outright blasphemous splendour.

Splendidly gorgeous, with a stark cinematography and brilliant vistas. The untouched majesty of the mountain wilderness, old world brilliance, and realistic ancestral design aesthetic; all so transportative. The candlelight on the wood and bone, the moonlight on a snakes scales, the breath heaving in the darkness; such a visceral ambience. The “electric & basey” strings and horns, resonating through the mountains and your chest. Hagazussa breathes dark breaths into your mind and body that linger after exhalation.

The horror here is of a downplayed and human fashion, but the unseen horrors of the dark dance around the edges of the film’s entirety. In this spartan and nigh-nether-worldly experience, the psycho-sexuality in the crevices of life bleed out. There is an innate fear and dirtiness to the sexuality here, with menstruation being a shunned secret, the origin & presence of children being a down-glanced shame, and the presence of throttled rape bubbling to the surface in a dastardly way (there is a devilish grin here that will chill and remain). Most of all might be the quasi-animalistic masturbation; the consummation of an unseen beast that bears itself when she is face deep in the coarse and musty hair - titillating and revolting. But hers is an experience bleakly grasped and wraithly rewarding.

It is an odd but rewarding film. Never easily identified or truly explained, but continuously gripping and evocative. A wretching grasping claw in a sea of unforgiven blackness, hollowed and harrowing. Mundane, in a manner, and forever a slowly-burning candle of malice and misunderstanding. Exciting, enlivening or elucidating I cannot call it, but I felt it, I experienced it, and i empathized with it. There is black magic in the frames, from a mysterious subject and the encorsling possibilities of a new filmmaker. It is worth peering into this malicious mist.