Let’s face it, technology is considered both a blessing and a curse these days, which is why it was only a matter of time before the idea of a haunted iPhone tormenting millennials to emphasise the current shallowness of humanity would get turned into a horror movie sooner or later, and such is the case with Babak Anvari’s, Wounds.
Given the success of his debut feature, Under The Shadow (2016), which told an unusual ghost story set amongst a war-torn political backdrop, it comes as no surprise that the British-Iranian filmmaker quickly made a name for himself on the international film circuit, leaving audiences brimming with anticipation for his next stab at the horror genre. While not as personal as his previous effort, this time around Anvari seems to be having a lot more fun with his material, executing his vision with a bigger budget, bigger names and even bigger ideas.
A Call For Help
Dropping out of college doesn’t seem like such a big deal when you have your good looks and a slight sense of wit to get you through the day, which seems to be working for Will (Armie Hammer), who spends his nights working late at a Bourbon Street bar, often rubbing customers up the wrong way with his smug air of authority or flirting with the bar-regular, Alicia (Zazie Beetz), regardless of the fact that she’s usually accompanied by her new boyfriend, Jeffrey (Karl Glusman).
One night after a violent brawl breaks out in the bar, Will finds an iPhone on the floor that was abandoned by a group of underage teens who filmed the havoc and fled in a panic. Slipping the phone into his pocket, Will takes the device back to his apartment where we meet his post-grad girlfriend, Carrie (Dakota Johnson). Managing to unlock the phone in an attempt to contact the owner, Will accidently finds a collection of disturbing photos that soon unlocks a gateway to unfathomable darkness, slowly dragging the two decaying lovebirds into a vortex of soul-draining terror.
Where There’s a Will, There’s A Way
While the screenplay might not offer much in terms of character development, the performances are still very strong. Hammer plays Will with a zany confidence, but his usual prince-charming charisma is counterbalanced with a wiseacre attitude that shapes him into a far-from-perfect protagonist, making his character all the more believable. We’ve all met guys like him before.
Johnson plays Carrie as the emotionally distant girlfriend, whose trust issues intensify when Will’s connection with the phone begins to cause strange, erratic behaviour. Even though her role is minor, she obtains a moody ghostlike presence in each scene that matches Hammers‘ suitably, almost as if she’s hiding her own skeletons in the closet that also need to be addressed by the darkness leaking into their home. As for the rest of the cast, they mostly play roles to shape our judgement of Will through the bad decisions he makes, rather than acting as catalysts for a wholly compelling narrative.
Anvari’s non-linear approach towards exploring Will’s rotting ego is less refined than it should be, yet the occasional glimpses of his mental deterioration are handled quite intelligently; like, the frequent flash of a decomposing eyeball in his imagination could be interpreted as his inability to see things clearly or lack of self-awareness, or the multitude of c*ckroach infestations appearing around him could signify that he is, well, dead inside.
Slowly but surely, we begin to understand that Will’s descent into paranoia is the only way he can come to the realisation that the darkness engulfing those around him, was in fact manifested by his own inner ugliness, and it’s not until he loses the things he has personally sabotaged (Carrie, Alicia, his job and his sanity) that he can finally begin to heal. This is all quite abstract stuff and it’s never really clear if this was Anvari’s intention, but it still serves as a fascinatingly original way to construct a horror-themed character study.
Under The Skin
Based on Nathan Ballingrud’s short story, The Visible Filth, Wounds is a film less concerned with following the narrative of its source material than it is exploring the ideas the underpin it. It calls to mind the works of Asian horror cinema that became popular at beginning of the new millennium, such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s, Pulse (2001), and Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call (2003); two films that skillfully used technology to connect the transitional space between the living and the dead…or whatever else is lost in-between, and Wounds seems to utilize those same conventions, but in a much more challenging, if not, ill-conceived way.
Wounds does a great job at paying tribute to that style of cinema, but the more it tries to carve its latent ideas into our psyches, is exactly where it has the potential to lose shape for less open-minded viewers. Mostly because the so-called darkness that torments Will is never clearly defined, due to Anvari’s refusal to explain what the malevolent entity is. Ambiguity can be a powerful tool, especially in the midst of creating tension, but his execution here at times is admittedly clumsy, yet somehow, Anvari manages to keep us hooked with constantly diverting our expectations, unveiling the story like a slow-burn mystery, fuelled with some downright unsettling sound design and macabre imagery that are bound to stain the memory long after the credits roll.
Under The Shadow unearthed its strengths by integrating rare cultural ideologies into its story, whereas Wounds offers a playful, more ambiguous nightmare that still captures the same eerie atmosphere that made Anvari’s debut so effective. His approach towards purposeful ambiguity can be frustrating at times, but pays off as a whole because it keeps our brains ticking; linking Will’s deteriorating ego with the strange happenings around him, and thankfully to Anvari’s unconventional style of storytelling as a filmmaker, it works.
Conclusion: Some Wounds Never Heal
On the surface, Wounds has just as much potential to confuse as it does to entertain, blending the supernatural with the real world and the metaphorical with the literal, but if one cuts a little deeper, it’s an exploration of ignorance and the inability to recognise that the irresponsible choices we make as humans can often result in dire consequences. It’s a work of sticky, unyielding dread – one of those misunderstood gems that comes along every so often, catching you off-guard with its skin-crawling concept and arcane atmosphere.
Have you seen Wounds? If so, tell us what did or didn’t work for you. Let us know in the comments below.
Wounds was released in the US and the UK on October 18th, 2019. For other release dates, click here.
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