Azrael is the best movie of 2024 you may never get to watch. [Update: This weekend, you get to watch it.]

Samara Weaving in Azrael. // courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Update 9/26/24: Thanks to some moving, shifting, and other assorted Movie Business TM stuff, IFC/Shudder have given Azrael a wide theatrical release, including KC theaters—and obviously an eventual VOD release. Back at Panic Fest 2024 in April, our reviewer Abby Olcese got a chance to see this wild new movie—via Missouri’s own Simon Barrett—when it seemed like it might go the way of so many other modern studio films and get infinitely shelved as a tax write off. That original story is below:

How do you review a movie most people may never see? 

The majority of films at an event like Panic Fest get some kind of release. Even the mega-independent movies will eventually hit VOD or, if they’re lucky, find a physical media home with a boutique outfit like Arrow or Vinegar Syndrome. The future of E.L. Katz and Simon Barrett’s Azrael, however, remains uncertain. 

As Barrett informed the Panic Fest audience at Azrael’s Friday night screening, after the film finishes its festival run (if you happen to be in New Orleans, it’s screening at the Overlook Film Festival Sunday and Monday), it has no further scheduled screenings or a release date.

Like Macon Blair’s excellent The Toxic Avenger remake, Azrael is for all intents and purposes being shelved by its distributor, Paramount.

In a way, it’s understandable. The studio is currently in merger talks, which typically means anything not already slated and/or a guaranteed slam dunk gets back burnered until the dust settles. And Azrael is no guaranteed slam dunk. It’s a fascinating genre experiment designed to make viewers ask more questions than it answers. Mainstream American audiences notoriously handle subtlety and ambiguity with all the maturity of a toddler who’s just been told they have to stop watching Cocomelon.

The potential audience for this movie is as niche as they come. If (and hopefully when) that niche finds Katz and Barrett’s freaky slice of post-apocalyptic religious folk horror, however, they’re in for a real treat. Azrael is action-packed, curious and nasty, with a powerhouse performance from star Samara Weaving that sits alongside her breakout work in Ready or Not in its Energizer Bunny-levels of commitment.

Some time in the future (the technology we see suggests it’s not far off), the rapture has happened. In the years following, some people decide to forgo the perceived sin of human speech—an intertitle card cites Psalm 39, “I will watch my ways and keep my tongue from sin; I will put a muzzle on my mouth while in the presence of the wicked.” 

Weaving’s unnamed woman and her partner (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) are two such people. They live a quiet, simple existence in the forest until they’re captured by another community of voluntarily mute people to be sacrificed to the flesh-eating demons who also stalk the woods. Weaving’s captors think she’ll be easy prey. They thought wrong.

That’s a simple enough starting place, and using location, setting and language to play with established genre tropes is nothing new (see 2023 Fantastic Fest standout Out of Darkness for another example). However, Katz and Barrett use this premise as a jumping-off point for a much stranger story that makes us question everything we’re seeing. 

Weaving’s character appears to be part of a prophecy we don’t know the full extent of. Her abductors, while brutal, become increasingly sympathetic. Weaving briefly escapes captivity with the help of a man in a large, well-equipped truck complete with bright headlights and a working stereo. He speaks, but we can’t understand what he’s saying (according to Barrett the language is a kind of pidgin esperanto).

All of this generates a mounting pile of questions: Where are we geographically? Do the forest-dwellers like Weaving, Stewart-Jarrett and their captors represent most of humanity, or have they chosen to live this way? Why do the man-eating monsters in the woods seem more interested in revering Weaving than in eating her? If you want answers, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re willing to speculate, however, you’ve come to the right place. 

Azrael is a mystery box with no apparent key, which, for the right viewer, can be a tantalizing experience. That mystery is enhanced by Katz’s earthy visuals and committed physical performances across the board. One reason Weaving makes such a good scream queen is her expressive face—big eyes, high cheekbones, bold eyebrows and a slightly upturned nose—and she gets to employ the full range of motion here while the filmmakers strategically highlight it in mud, blood and sweat.

Even if Azrael got a traditional release, it would likely only ever achieve cult status, which for studios increasingly worried about their bottom line doesn’t inspire confidence. However, it would be a shame to see this movie go the way of Coyote vs. Acme, shelved and eventually deleted for the sake of a tax break. By Barrett’s account, he and Katz got to make exactly the movie they wanted, an increasing rarity in the current filmmaking climate. Hopefully, viewers will eventually get to puzzle over the fruits of their labors. In the meantime, however, you’ll have to make do with others’ descriptions of it.