John’s Horror Corner: Baskin (2015), a disturbed, disorienting and gory Turkish terror about cults and Hell.

MY CALL:  Fans of visceral and unapologetic yet intelligent horror should enjoy this.  MORE MOVIES LIKE Baskin:  Really hard to say.  This film is “a little” like a lot of iconic horror films without really being terribly similar to any one of them.  In this review I make comparisons to 13 horror films.  Among those, I’d say Hellraiser (1987), Event Horizon (1997) and The Void (2016) are the closest match without really being a match at all.

The Turkish word “baskin” means “[police] raid”

We spend nearly the entire first 30 minutes of this film getting to know a squad of five Turkish police officers.  A band of crooked perverted storytellers, they beat up kitchen boys, walk out on the bill, have Turkish hip-hop singalongs in the squad van, and clearly watch each other’s backs.  Over the course of this strange character study, I come to find them almost equally as despicable as, well…sort of likable.

They respond to a call to the remote Turkish countryside, a land of poor radio signals and eerie local folklore about shrines. It feels like The [Eastern European] Hills Have Eyes (1977, 2006) complete with shallow gene-pooled locals and a creepy abandoned manor.  From there, things take an infernal turn for the worse and to tell you more would ruin the fun.

For his first-time feature length film, director Can Evrenol (The Field Guide to Evil) packs a mean punch. Long dialogues stage our characters like the acts of a play, and the discontinuity in our timeline creates a surreal, trippy, nightmarish tone in which we question what’s actually happening—what’s actually connected?

From surreal we slip into pandemonium stew flavored with just dashes of numerous familiar horrors: momentary sprigs of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Session 9 (2001), the atmospheric aroma of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Hellraiser (1987), a macabre Martyrs (2008) meets The Last Shift (2015) marinade, and the warm cult charm of Nightbreed (1990) and Silent Hill (2006).

There is a mild sense of Lovecraftian madness, but having lost its elegant subtlety to an evil meat grinder.  Not sure what I mean?  Think Event Horizon (1997) or The Void (2016), complete with other-worldly explanations of what Hell “really is.”  I mean, it gets brutal, gross, a bit perverse, and gory. There’s lots of blood, some intestine-tugging disemboweling, throat slitting, eye gauging and even a twisted (but thankfully brief) birth scene.

Some things are sort of explained, other things are somewhat implied, and some specifics leave us in the dark to figure out on our own—and that’s okay. Much as with The Shrine (2010) or Oculus (2014), this film will drop the curtain leaving you asking yourself “what just happened,” “was all that real” and “what was up with all those frogs?”  Then, regarding the most important of your questions, you’ll probably pause and say “oooooooh, that’s how it’s all connected” as you realize what happened.