Balabanov having put his idiosyncratic stamp
on the perverse art-movie (Of Freaks and Men)
and and the populist gangster film (Brother
1 & II) turns to to the horror genre in this
provocation, set in a grimy industrial town
in Kazakhstan during the period of ‘shortages’,
war (in Afghanistan) and so-called perestroika
in 1984.
A compromised Professor of Atheism, whose
car breaks down, and a partying young couple,
a self-seeking would-be entrepreneur and the
vulnerable party chief’s daughter he’s picked
up, find their paths cross at an isolated illegal
drinking hole patrolled by a creepy lookout,
a moonlighting local police captain and
psychopath.
Balabanov, adopting a tone which blends the
explicitness and moral inscrutiblility of John
McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
with a cynical black humour that exceeds
even Kubrick’s at his darkest, contextualises
the ensuing terror against a carefully,
brilliantly observed background of wholesale
degradation, personal, environmental,
political, moral and, most significantly,
religious. This superbly-acted, finely-directed,
vision of hell provides this year’s grizzliest
cinematic ghost-ride. As the opening credits
calmly inform us, it’s based on a true story.
Wally Hammond,
Time Out London
