As one of the pre-eminent genre film festivals in North America, Fantastic Fest has always had its pick of the litter when it comes to international horror. So it’s not a surprise that the programmers at Fantastic Fest often pride themselves on inviting previous filmmakers back with their latest features. That is certainly the case this year with Majid Al Ansari, an Emirati filmmaker who returns to Fantastic Fest for the second time with The Vile, a twisted blend of polygamy and horror.
Amani (Bdoor Mohammad) has done well for herself. Despite living in a country where polyagmy is legal, Amani has built a committed relationship with her husband Khalid (Jasem Alkharraz) and remains close to her daughter Noor (Iman Tarik). But all of this changes in an instant when Khalid comes home from a work trip with a shocking surprise: he’s now also married to Zahra (Sarah Taibah), a young woman pregnant with Khalid’s firstborn son.
At first, Amani is shattered. She blames herself for not giving her husband another child, and refuses all offers from her sister to move in with Noor (claiming, not without reason, that her pride is all she has left). But the more she digs into the background of Zahra, the more she begins to think that this woman is something darker than a mere mistress. And when strange occurrences begin to happen around the house, Amani must gather up the courage to throw the life she built away if it means keeping her daughter safe.
The Vile is the second feature from Emirati filmmaker Majid Al Ansari, and, like his first, bears witness to the unraveling of a character trapped in isolation. Rattle the Cage (or Zinzana), Al Ansari’s first feature, was set entirely in a remote police precinct, and here the director reestablishes his knack for minimalist storytelling by setting most of The Vile behind the closed doors of Amani’s home. With such modest production elements to work with, Al Ansari picks and chooses the genre tropes to embrace, crafting a film that cleverly bounces between melodrama and horror several times over its runtime.
At the forefront of The Vile is Amani. Mohammad will be a fresh face for American audiences – she has zero credits outside the United Arab Emirates – but she effortlessly captures the tension her character feels between being a partner and being an object. Mohammad’s performance is what anchors the movie; Al Ansari’s direction makes the necessary gestures towards hysteria, but we are never left to doubt Amani’s sense that her world is being taken from her by something more sinister than a bad husband. For much of the film’s first half, she floats through the wreckage of her previous world in a daze, and it is this numb response that makes Amani such a sympathetic anchor for horror.
And then there’s Noor. If Amani is trapped between generations – young enough to have an identity beyond just that of mother and wife, old enough to fall (mostly) into line when Khalid pulls the rug out from under her - then Noor represents an even more conflicted victim. She is willing to give Zahra the benefit of some doubt, but she is still very much a child, and one that is being forced to reevaluate the role of women in society due to the actions of her father. But there’s independence there, too – and Noor’s quiet resignation in the face of regular bullying gives Zahra the only leverage she needs to tear the family further apart.
For much of the film’s second act, we watch Amani and Noor as they try to navigate their new normal. But it is not until the film’s final act – when mother and daughter are lost to their own nightmares – that The Vile really demonstrates its inventiveness as a horror film. Al Ansari draws inspiration from silent cinema, shooting much of the film’s most haunting sequences through an iris effect that encircles Amani and Noor and makes them seem set apart from the comfort of their own home. This is not new visual language for the genre, but it’s a technique so rarely used that it pops on the screen, giving The Vile its own unique flavor of gothic horror.
And while it may be an insignificant thing to most horror fans, The Vile also lingers on its characters between the final confrontation and the closing credits. Given the care Al Ansari and his cast take to establish Amani and Noor’s struggles with a less-modern world, an ending that does not thoroughly grapple with this fallout would have left some (me) wanting. Al Ansari is smarter than that, of course, and lingers on a character or two with both trepidation and caution. Even if Amani and Noor are lucky enough to survive the force of nature that has entered their home, the fabric of their world has been ripped apart, and that’s not something that can be wavered away with a single chyron.
Ultimately, The Vile never quite matches the madcap energy of Rattle the Cage – there is, after all, no Ali Suliman here to dial the movie up to eleven. But Al Ansari’s sophomore feature is another example of how a few good actors and a well-dressed set is more than enough to create genre cinema that colors outside the lines. With just the right balance of issue and horror, The Vile continues Al Ansari’s trajectory as a trailblazer of Emirati cinema and one of the most fun genre filmmakers working outside the United States.
