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Eda has a
pretty perfect life. She's got a wonderful
boyfriend and she's also starring in an upcoming dance
show. But lately Eda has had a lot of stomach aches so
she decides to go see a doctor, only to find out that
she's three months pregnant - and the father is her
secret lover. She realizes that the only thing that she
can do here is to have an illegal abortion. Three years
later she's married and pregnant again... but her
unborn child hasn't forgotten about her.
Turkey is struggling to break into the horror industry
but failing over and over again, and Araf is easily
their biggest failure yet. I can't believe that this
actually got the theatrical treatment in its home
country (and I'm sure that the people who went to see
this film would agree with me), in fact, I'm not even
sure this should have been put on DVD. Had this been
an American movie, it would have struggled to find
distribution, even straight to DVD.
The movie revolves around Eda, a dancer (no, not a
stripper) who has a boyfriend but is sleeping with a
married man on the side. One day she finds out that
she's pregnant and since it's too late to have an
abortion, she decides to have one the illegal way.
Three years later she's married to her boyfriend and
is once again pregnant, but soon the obvious happens;
her unborn daughter comes to haunt her. No no, it's
not a ghost enfant, it's a four year old girl with
heavy make-up on and she's not even remotely scary.
In fact, the ghost girl actually seems pretty sweet,
much more so than her bizarre mother.
So what about Araf is it exactly that's so bad? Well
first of all there's the budget... or should I say
there's the obvious lack of budget. The movie looks
like it was shot by a couple of students who didn't
really know what they were doing. The directing is
amateurish to say the least and don't even get me
started on the sloppy editing. The make up and special
effects wouldn't even have scared anyone back in the
60's as they look incredibly fake. In fact, I didn't
actually get that the scare scenes were in fact meant
to be scary until they were over.
The acting is excruciating as well, but to be fair,
the scriptwriters didn't really give them any chance.
The characters are extremely odd, the dialogues are
laughable (for example, what kind of doctor would say,
with a big smile on her face; "Congratulations, you're
pregnant, and it's too late to make an abortion"?) and
when the lead, Eda, turns into a complete loony
towards the end, nothing seems to make sense anymore.
I don't know what else to say. This obviously couldn't
have seemed much better on paper either so I'm not
sure why this movie got made - but on the other hand,
it probably didn't cost more than one months rent to
make. If Turkey wants to break into the horror
industry, they're going to have to try a bit harder
than this as it's an extremely poor attempt and
definitely not worth checking out.
Not a whole lot in this department.
Incompetent score which feels cheesy, cheap and
inappropriate. Didn't do it for me.
Another disappointing ghost film from the country that
so badly wants to break into the horror industry. All
of a sudden, movies like Büyü and Okul don't seem that
bad anymore. This truly is the worst Turkish horror
flick I've seen so far and I'm pretty sure they can
only get better from this point.
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