Late last month, I posted the trailer for Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala's upcoming horror film “Goodnight Mommy” and called it “the scariest trailer I've seen in a long time.” I wasn't kidding! After my post went up, multiple other outlets proceeded to call it the scariest trailer of ALL time, which I found a tad hyperbolic. Nevertheless! The Austrian scare flick may have just received a competitor for scariest trailer of 2015 from a twisted little Turkish film entitled “Baskin,” which is set to premiere in the Midnight Madness section at this year's Toronto International Film Festival.
The plot? “A squad of unsuspecting cops goes through a trapdoor to Hell when they stumble upon a Black Mass in an abandoned building.” Which sounds like the storyline to a cheesy, borderline incoherent Lucio Fulci movie! Except “Baskin” appears to be less “The Beyond” and more “Hellraiser” (only even more perverse). While the trailer features some of the most insanely on-the-nose, over-the-top “Hell” imagery I have ever seen, it still somehow manages to inspire piercing dread instead of laughter — I think because there are just enough disturbing, cryptic details in the visuals to keep you off-balance.
Director Can Evrenol, who based the feature on his own short film of the same name, is just the latest in a long line of European filmmakers including Pascal Laugier (“Martyrs”), Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo (“Inside”), Tom Six (“The Human Centipede”) and Srdjan Spasojevic (“A Serbian Film”) who have obviously dedicated themselves to fucking with American sensibilities. Mission accomplished, you guys!
Watch this damn trailer above or below. Don't say you weren't warned.