a review of 巴斯金

Well, that was something of a ride, albeit one that initially had me questioning my expectations. The true horror aspects take a certain amount of time to arrive, but when they do it goes all in on gore and unpleasant Boschian tableaux. I'll admit that I don't know have a lot of in-depth knowledge of Turkish culture and politics, but I wonder how much this film might be an indirect commentary on Turkey's turn in recent years towards a kind of authoritarianism. The main characters are a group of seemingly corrupt and grossly chauvinistic policemen, out for a night on patrol. We never actually see them enforce any kind of law, but they end up being made subject to a more primal and terrifying version of it, one that seemingly predates civilization itself. Their eventual fates end up echoing certain conversations that happen at the beginning of the film, perhaps implying that the road of patriarchal authority leads to unrestrained chaos.