BASKIN Midnight

First-time feature director Can Evrenol audaciously mashes up a cop movie and a satanic cult slasher in BASKIN, the unholy spawn of their union. Gorkem Kasal brings sensitivity and strength to his performance as the vulnerable cop, who has a role to play in the mystery that entraps his squad in the basement of an abandoned building, the home of a family of devil-worshipping amputees — or is it, in fact, the underworld? Even the most avid genre fan might have trouble naming a Turkish horror film outside of ŞEYTAN (1974), sometimes referred to as the Turkish EXORCIST, the infamous unauthorized remake of William Friedkin’s classic. BASKIN’s extreme gore and metaphysical psychology place it in the tradition of the recent Euro-horror renaissance begun in the mid-2000s by Alexandre Aja, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo and Pascal Laugier. — Gillian Horvat