Under the shadow
Movie review, A 2016 Persian horror-thriller directed by Babak Anvari
This is my second movie review. I don’t really want to “review” the movie as such. I want to convince you to watch this movie, maybe. Is that a better thing to do? I don’t know. I’ll just talk about bits I found interesting and you decide. You know what.. just read this after you’ve watched if you care about spoilers. Okay.
I’m ditching AI. Learn to live with bad grammar, poor spellings, stupidly placed commas, poor choice of words, and missing words here and there. Maybe you’ll miss all this horrible English in teh post-ChatGPT-fied world. Enjoy while it lasts.. if you can.
Now, coming to the movie. Today, I’ll be reviewing Under the Shadow. It’s a 2016 Persian-language psychological-horrorish-thriller by Babak Anvari. I know a spoiler-free review is a good review. But the fun about talking about this movie lies in interpreting it. So, I’ll share my thoughts without revealing plot points as best as possible.
The movie revolves around Shideh, a young woman, and her daughter Dorsa, who live in Tehran. Her husband is sent away to serve as a doctor in the Iran-Iraq War, and we don’t see him much in the movie. As a husband, he is absent for the most part, and he didn’t seem great, to be honest. The film starts with Shideh requesting the college authorities to allow her to complete her medical education. They reject her request, citing her political activism as the reason she is no longer allowed to pursue her studies. Several years have passed since she was barred from college. She now has a kid and everything. I think the husband is an asshole because the only time we see him, he’s fighting with Shideh, blaming her for not completing her studies. According to him, Shideh wouldn’t have gotten into activism if she really valued her medical degree. We see Shideh hiding her medical textbooks from her husband and others several times. She has unresolved ambitions and is frustrated about not being able to complete her degree. She doesn’t want any reminders of her lost dreams. But it could also be that, in the society she lives in, reading medical books is considered criminal since she’s barred from medical education. We can’t know for sure. It is also possible that the husband is the kind of character who might out even family members as “traitors.” We can’t know for sure. But he kind of gave that energy.
We see Shideh in a hijab when we are introduced to her as a traditional Muslim woman, and very soon, we find out that she is anything but that. She wears Western clothes, has short hair, and works out to Jane Fonda tapes on TV. It’s almost like she lives a double life. She lives according to societal expectations outside of her house. But inside her home, she lives on her terms. This, I think, is the central theme of the movie. Her home is her little haven. Within the confines of her house, we see Shideh almost content with her life. The tensions keep escalating outside, yet she remains resolved not to move out of her home. Her husband keeps asking her to travel to his parents’ home, where it is safer. But we see Shideh resolved not to go. As viewers, we keep wondering why she is staying in such an unsafe environment with her daughter. Initially, we’re almost on her side. But as the movie progresses, the terrors of war keep getting more and more real. Soon, the neighbors start vacating the building one by one. And yet Shideh refuses to leave.
Even in war-torn Tehran, Shideh prefers to stay home with her daughter rather than move in with her in-laws. For most of us, it makes sense from a physical safety point of view to move out. But for Shideh, moving out of her home could mean giving up on her freedom and performing familial and societal roles that she isn’t really super keen on. We are introduced to the escalating situation through the increasingly concerning behavior of her daughter and the Djinn. It’s the neighbor who first introduces us to the Djinn, planting a seed of fear. The neighbour is also sort of like the flag bearer of the old world thinking and values. Very strange things begin to happen. There are some legit jump scare moments. Watch out for those! Is the Djinn real? Is it a psychological manifestation of her trauma and fears? I personally think the Djinn is very much her internal anxieties. But the Djinn also situates Dorsa at the center of Shideh’s conflict. Dorsa is an annoying and difficult child, to be honest. There are times we see Shideh lose her cool with Dorsa. Very ripe setup for mom guilt. Dorsa and her doll become a key element. The doll, in my interpretation, represents innocence, which is slowly being chipped away by the horrors of war and the supernatural elements creeping into their lives. When the doll goes missing, Shideh’s sense of control and security starts to unravel even further. It’s as if the loss of the doll signifies the loss of normalcy, the final straw in a life that is becoming increasingly chaotic.
The house, though increasingly dangerous, represents the one place where Shideh can still be herself—wearing Western clothes, exercising to Jane Fonda, defying the traditional expectations of her society. The external threat, whether it’s the bombs or the Djinn, mirrors the internal struggles she faces as a woman in an oppressive society.
The ending of Under the Shadow is as ambiguous as the rest of the movie, and I won’t spoil it for you. But I will say this: the film leaves you with a sense of unresolved tension, much like Shideh’s life. There are no easy answers, no neat conclusions. Though she does embrace her maternal survival instinct, we don’t know exactly the kind of life she builds for herself and her daughter.
This movie has the traditional elements of a horror movie with its eerie, creepy vibes and jump-scare moments. But it’s much more than that. I think it’s more about the existential struggles of a woman with hopes, dreams, and ambitions in an oppressive, war-torn country where physical, psychological and personal freedoms are to be defended and fought for.