by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $12.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Junes Zahdi, Freddy Shahin, Samara Nohra
Intro:
What begins as a study of self-acceptance in the face of reawakening past trauma soon builds into psychological horror, complete with dissonant score and obligatory jump scares.
An exploration of the blurred border between religion and witchcraft, The Judgment follows Mo (Junes Zahdi) and Hisham (Freddy Shahin), two gay men forced back into the closet when they travel to Egypt to visit family and, in doing so, confront long-buried truths. What begins as a study of self-acceptance in the face of reawakening past trauma soon builds into psychological horror, complete with dissonant score and obligatory jump scares.
Written and directed by Marwan Mokbel, this is a slow unravelling of one man’s sanity. After being apparently cursed by someone practicing witchcraft who disapproves of his lifestyle, Mo begins to hallucinate mystery bruises, persistent apparitions, and arguably most worrying of all, a recurring noise emanating from the shadows that is unsettling enough to rival the tongue-clucking of Hereditary. It’s clear Mokbel has some experience working in the sound department on past films, his ability to heighten the tension of a scene through sound alone does wonders for the eerie atmosphere of the film.
Visually, the vibrant streets of Lebanon, here serving as a stand in for Egypt, swing like a pendulum from bright and welcoming to claustrophobic and overstimulating, depending on the demands of the scene. Addressing the intersection of religion and sexuality, Mokbel reflects on how traditional beliefs can clash with personal identity with far more foreboding prophecies and stab-happy spectres than you might dare to expect from a deep-dive into a character’s internal struggle for self-love.
That said, subtlety is not exactly a strong suit here. From occasionally clunky dialogue to heavy-handed metaphors and foreboding red lighting, the message may have benefited from a more delicate approach. The importance of intention behind one’s actions is a major theme in the film—the intention behind a muttered curse, the intentional embracing of your full self and the face you chose to present to the world—and yet the film’s own intentions are quickly muddied after the first act thanks to too many balls up in the air. If the intention was to address all elements of the story as equally important, it’s fair to say the end result is more haphazard and jumbled than anticipated.
