The more I think about it, the more I feel that Under the Shadow really has too many metaphors, or is it a simile... At the beginning, the story is set during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, and what cultural revolution did the heroine participate in (I don’t know if it’s a translation issue), I immediately thought of 1979 Islam Revolution, if I remember correctly, 79 years ago Iranian women should not need to cover their hair. Sure enough, the subsequent episodes continued to show the oppression of social ethos on women's clothing. The heroine was unable to continue her medical studies because she had participated in political campaigns, and was trapped in a small apartment. There were frequent wars, and a huge missile-like object was inserted directly into the roof of the house upstairs. Then to the "giant" approaching step by step, it turned out to be a hijab! (That scene was really scary screaming...) The shadow of war, power politics, and gender oppression in the name of religion, all merged into one horror film.
That last scene is also meaningful: the scary thing about the genie is that once it grabs onto what you care about, you can't get rid of it. It will always haunt you. Everyone secretly talks about and fears the djinn, only the heroine refuses to believe it until the djinn also haunts her. What are giants? Maybe it's a deformed religious culture, maybe it's tyranny, maybe it's endless wars. And they were born and grew up here, no matter where they moved, they could never escape the pain of this land.
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Under the Shadow reviews
