The author's relaxed narrative rhythm ensures that "Under the Shadow" is a horror film to watch, preventing it from falling into the abyss of preaching and tediousness due to its heavy social themes; excellent plot selection and characterization It makes the author's point of view and thought more convincing; the skillful and sophisticated scene scheduling and the original detail processing left the deepest impression on the author.
At the beginning of the film, the heroine Shideh drives home alone after failing to return to school. She is interrogated by soldiers on the way. She has already fallen to the bottom of her heart. Rolled off the cheek. The minimalist scenes and restrained shots, only in this one place, show the heroine's personality with a transparent image. However, even an independent, rational and determined intellectual woman like Shideh is not immune to the shadow of war. Her sanity and emotions gradually disintegrated as the internal and external dilemmas deepened.
In the middle of the film, Iraq launched a strategic bombing of Tehran. The missile that fell into the apartment building looked like a sharp blade into the belly of a war refugee. Although there are no compelling scenes of gut piercing and blood flowing in the film, the smell of gunpowder smoke and the breath of death in the picture are suffocating. This "sharp blade" hidden in the background is also a blade of judgment. It ruthlessly shreds Shideh's crappy doctor's disguise, exposes her fragility and powerlessness, and constantly emphasizes to Shideh her identity as a medical school graduate. , and then "executed" her hope of realizing her personal worth.
As the story unfolds, the war is coupled with chaos and inner anguish, breaking the balance between reason and madness in Shideh's mind. The broken ceiling can no longer protect the safety of her family, and the irreparable cracks on it are more like the abyss of fear bursting out of her brain, and supernatural ghosts peep out, swallowing her sanity from top to bottom. Dorsa's condition also deteriorated, pushing her to the brink of collapse
The set in the film, as a visual motif, has repeatedly shown the characteristics of narrative. The once-orderliness of Shideh's home is in stark contrast to the disorganized post-crisis situation, underscoring the changes in the characters' hearts. The filmmaker effectively used the scenery as an element of scene scheduling, and successfully manifested Shideh's abstract mental state in different time and space.
Shideh's clothing changes also point to each other. In the second quarter of the film, Shideh, who has taken off his black hijab, looks more and more "exposed" under the camera, as if breaking through the social and cultural constraints, he shows the temptation of a mature female body, his inner contradictions and the awakening of female consciousness. It also reached its peak.
In the end, the film ends when Shideh defeats the djinn in the image of his mother and successfully saves himself and his daughter. In the film, the image of the giant has undergone three changes. The original giant had no specific image, but appeared in the form of a husband and a strange man, symbolizing the suppression and control of the female group represented by Shideh in the patriarchal society. The second form of the genie appears in the form of a daughter, which seems to form a unity with the genie in the third mother form, a reflection of the inner contradictions of the heroine Shideh. Shideh's incapacity during the war made him doubt and shake his dual identities as wife and mother. All kinds of external discrimination and oppression against women and dissatisfaction within the family concretize psychological anxiety into the image of a terrifying mother giant. But when Shideh finally defeated the demon and completed his self-redemption, the image of the mother giant also disappeared.
"Under the Shadow" completes a double return to fear in both content and form, and excels in deducing deep psychological horror. The power, skillful scene scheduling, and tacit sound and editing make it a successful film that is entertaining and thoughtful. At the same time, it is even more commendable to explore grand propositions such as human and world conditions as a horror film, and strive to see a big difference in a small pattern.
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