I don’t like horror, and i like it even less when horror mishandles queer story telling. I was excited to see this because of the high ratings it’s maintained. So i thought maybe it was done right this time.
The problem with the story is that it fails to understand the plight of a marginalized community. To this day queer youth still have to question if their feelings won’t put them in danger. And that’s just their actual day to day existence. Our community is always in danger for expressing the love for the people we want to love. This film easily establishes that Naim and Ryan’s relationship will put them in danger and so half the work the film needs to do is easily established.
But instead of having their relationship outed, and thus punished with this religious rite, which forces the two of them to question what they see in one another… the film succumbs to some awful subplot about jealousy, self policing, and internalized homophobia. So the writers feel they get a better bang for their buck with a third act “betrayal” reveal. As if two kids can’t possibly be in love against existing odds in the first place. All that results in is Ryan telling Naim, “if you see ‘me’, it’s not me” and in doing so also tells the audience the same thing. Thus every bit of possible drama is stripped from the third act, and also destroys any foundations of this relationship that the audience is suppose to be concerned about because Naim did this to himself.
If the writers had simply had two kids, who are in love, be targeted by their community and subjected to this archaic rite then the audience would have been forced to question whether or not Naim or Ryan are actually seeing what they think they see. Their decisions would have actually required sacrifice, “we can’t see each other or we will die” because neither of them can be sure who they see is actually who they love and not some supernatural terror unleashed on them. Then the audience can root for them, be worried for them, but instead the film just goes “yeah, from here forward it’s going to be the evil thing.”
Boring, 6 out of 10.