Look, I won't pretend to know why so many horror fans were disappointed by The Witch, which I loved. Cries that the film was 'overhyped' lead me to assume that it didn't have enough blood, entrails and general shock moments for mainstream gorehounds and jump scare-fanatics, whose tastes clearly don't align with mine. In any event, it looks like they may finally be getting the movie they wanted.
Is it possible the imagery seen in the new trailer for Can Evrenol's Baskin (embedded above and below) all comes from the same scene, and that the rest of the movie is a slow-burn bore? Yes! But reviews out of Fantastic Fest suggest otherwise, with We Got This Covered critic Matt Donato calling the film “Turkey's answer to a Rob Zombie movie” while Electric Sheep's Greg Klymkiw praises it as a “dense, scary, hilarious, nastily yummy-slurp world of eventual viscous-dribbling and mega-perversion.” (For Klymkiw, “mega-perversion” is clearly a compliment, god love him.)
Me? I'm a little icked out by this one, though I suppose I'll end up seeing it anyway (professional obligations and all). Based on everything I've heard, I expect it to live up to the blood-splattered expectations of the mega-perverted at heart. When they bill it as “from the studio that brought you 'The Human Centipede,” they clearly know what audience they're aiming for.
Baskin hits VOD on March 25. Here's the synopsis:
A five-man unit of cops on night patrol get more than they bargain for when they arrive at a creepy backwater town in the middle of nowhere after a call comes over the radio for backup. Entering a derelict building, the seasoned tough guys and their rookie junior, who”s still haunted by a traumatic childhood dream, do the one thing you should never do in this kind of movie: they split up. They soon realize they”ve stumbled into a monstrous charnel house and descend into an ever-more nightmarish netherworld where grotesque, mind-wrenching horrors await them at every turn. This is one Baskin (that”s “police raid” to you non-Turkish speakers) that isn”t going to end well. But wait! Things aren”t what they seem in this truly disturbing, outrageously gory, and increasingly surreal film whose unpredictable narrative pulls the carpet from under your feet and keeps you guessing right up to the final moment. A wildly original whatsit that reconfirms Turkey as the breakout national cinema of the moment.