Parents' Guide to Azrael

This horror movie with nearly no spoken dialogue is well-paced and plenty gory, but it gets bogged down in its lore, which seems simultaneously too complex and not complex enough. Azrael is named for the angel of death, and Samara Weaving is already good at that kind of thing, having gone on bloody rampages in The Babysitter, Mayhem, Ready or Not, and Guns Akimbo. Like the best action stars, she has a way of making her plight seem human—i.e., she's tired, scared, and slightly annoyed.

But the movie's troubles begin early. We're not exactly sure what's wrong with the rendezvous between Azrael and her lover, Kenan. Were they not supposed to leave the compound? Is their relationship forbidden? Whatever the reason, their punishment—to be sacrificed to the zombies—seems pretty harsh, especially for people trying to live without sin. Then, the sacrifice itself makes no sense. There are a bunch of zombies, so giving a human sacrifice to just one of them doesn't seem like it would help much. And there's more, involving a white-robed pregnant woman (Vic Carmen Sonne) who seems to be the leader of some kind of cult. In short, Azrael isn't fully able to tell its story using its "no dialogue" gimmick (at least not as well as John Woo's Silent Night did). It's passably amusing to watch Weaving do her thing, but it makes you wish it was in the service of a better movie.