The cinema of Turkey has brought instant classics from Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the recent Oscar-nominated Mustang, and much more, but it’s rare a full-fledged horror film gets imported to the United States. Later this month, that’ll change as IFC Films picked up the Toronto International Film Festival Midnight Madness hit Baskin and will release it into theaters and on VOD. Directed by Can Evrenol, adapting from his own short, it follows a group of cops who get more than they bargained for as they reality turns into a nightmare.
We said in our review, “Evrenol and his cowriters Ogulcan Eren Akay, Cem Ozuduru, and Ercin Sadikoglu (who assisted in expanding the original short) revel in the blackness of their environment and the depravity of their antagonistic force. The title means raid or sudden attack and that’s exactly what they provide once Arda, Seyfi, the volatile Yavuz (Muharrem Bayrak), Apo (Mehmet Fatih Dokgoz), and their boss Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu) choose to enter a building already with dead bodies in the walkway and another cop banging his head against a wall in a trance. Each room hides a new horror of malicious figures seeking carnal and homicidal assault. But it isn’t simply a descent into this lair for torture and death—reality becomes fluid and we’re soon unsure if our feet are even touching the ground.”
Check out the trailer and poster below.
A five-man unit of cops on night patrol get more than they bargain for when they arrive at a creepy backwater town in the middle of nowhere after a call comes over the radio for backup. Entering a derelict building, the seasoned tough guys and their rookie junior, who’s still haunted by a traumatic childhood dream, do the one thing you should never do in this kind of movie: they split up. They soon realize they’ve stumbled into a monstrous charnel house and descend into an ever-more nightmarish netherworld where grotesque, mind-wrenching horrors await them at every turn. This is one baskin (that’s “police raid” to you non-Turkish speakers) that isn’t going to end well. But wait! Things aren’t what they seem in this truly disturbing, outrageously gory, and increasingly surreal film whose unpredictable narrative slippages pull the carpet from under your feet and keep you guessing right up to the final moment. A wildly original whatsit that reconfirms Turkey as the breakout national cinema of the moment.
Baskin arrives in theaters and on VOD on March 25th.