Severin has thusfar released two collections of folk horror films under the name All the Haunts Be Ours. This is from the second one.

Severin is really doing a service to the world of folk horror with these products as many of these movies are hard to find and you probably wouldn’t even have heard of them without this help. Like this one. This isn’t even close to being the most obscure movie in the collections (this was the Saudi Arabia’s entry to the Academy Awards in 2021, so at least a handful of people have heard of it), but this was directed by a Saudi woman. Do you know many Saudi female directors there are? Wikipedia knows of six, and as far as I can tell, only three of them have made feature films that are not documentaries, although all of this information is in doubt, because there’s inconcistencies between what I can find on Wikipedia and IMDb.

Still, just the idea of having access to this movie might be a small miracle on it’s own. The oldest feature film I could find directed by a woman from Saudi Arabia was from 2012. They haven’t been able to do this for long.

But okay, the movie. There’s a small island community that practices a religion of their own. Each family sacrifices a daughter to the sea creatures and in turn the sea creatures let themselves be hunted by the islanders. Hayat was supposed to be sacrificed this way as a baby, but her father saved her at the last moment. Later, as a teenager, it is time to try again, but she still refuses, further ostracizing her from the community even though she tries to participate in the work even though she doesn’t get along with the foreman.

Forgetting the complications that woud result from such an extensive campaign of sacrifices (Can a community afford losing so many people? What about the balance between boys and girls?), the truth of the situation turns out to be much more fucked up than that. Hayat has scales on one of her feet. Why is that? It’s because the sea is turning the girls given to it into mermaids and because Hayat was momentarily in the water as a baby, the process started already. The villagers are eating them. So, their whole lifestyle is a weird form of cannibalism. (Also, again, questions: Since this is their only source of food, how little do these people eat for this to be sustainable? However, this does not matter as it is a fable.)

While the movie doesn’t dwell on it too much, it does acknowledge that the situation is not good and that there is something deeply wrong here. At the same time, I feel the movie manages to depict something interesting in the psyche that we so often would rather just push away: Normal people do messed up things to protect themselves. Usually this does cover girls as well, but there are also cultures where girls are seen to have little or no value until they are married. Saudis, in particular, are famous for not treating their women very well.

But okay, this is a review. Is the movie good? Yes. From the movies I’ve seen from that set, I did choose this one to write about for a reason (although I’m less than half-way through, so I might talk more about other movies from it).

It is quite deliberate and slow despite only 74 minute runtime. It was shot in black and white with very stark contrast giving the movie a nice otherworldly look which fits the sunny setting nicely.

Since Hayat doesn’t really speak much (nor does anyone else), we don’t always quite no what’s going on, but we have enough of an idea. She is trying to break the barriers that are keeping her back in this society and I, for one, am all for that.

The idea behind the film is very unique and intriguing in the sense that I can’t fathom how someone came up with it. Might just be a function of cultural differences, though.

Overall, the fact that this comes from a source from which we don’t get too many movies is a nice bonus, but the movie is definitely of high enough quality to be worth a watch even if this wasn’t true.