Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.
How do you deal with a slow burn? For me, it’s something that has to be done carefully. Move too slowly and you lose your audience. Move too quickly, and, well, it’s not really a slow burn. Horror movies are really the best genre for a good slow burn. The trick is to give us an opening that sets up our real world and then, piece by piece removes that normality. Under the Shadow, an Iranian horror film, does this surprisingly well.
Under the Shadow takes place during the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War. Shideh (Narges Rashidi) is a former medical student who, because of her radical political activity years earlier, is prevented from returning to school. She lives with her husband Iraj (Bobby Naderi) and her young daughter Dorsa (Avin Manshadi). Iraj, who is a doctor, is called to the front to treat wounded. Because Iraq has promised to bomb Tehran to the ground, he wants her to leave the city and go to his parents’ home. She refuses, claiming that she does not feel welcome there.
