I’m delighted to be able to watch these horror movies from lands and cultures I know very little about. For Malaysia, Netflix was able to offer me Munafik 2. I have not seen Munafik 1, alas, but I still caught the gist of this entertainingly over-the-top religious rant. In fact, a quick Google reveals that “munafik” defines hypocrite, or someone that professes to believe in Allah but truly doesn’t.
Munafik 2 felt to me like the equivalent of the U.S.’s Left Behind franchise. Continue reading
Trying to get my hands on as much horror from African nations as I could, I saw the Egyptian film Warda on Netflix and proceeded to watch it. This movie shares in a trend I’ve been noting in other supernatural horror films from predominantly Muslim nations: using the language of major American horror movies (particularly the Conjuring and Paranormal Activity franchises) to present both conflicts and reinforcement of faith. The ones I have watched ranged from good to awful. I’m glad to report that Warda falls on the better spectrum of that range.
It’s official: James Wan’s Conjuringverse has set its stamp on global horror cinema. A lot of the foreign horror films coming across my streaming platforms are taking the formula of haunted abodes, nuclear family, demonic evil and resolution by faith, and placing it within their own cultural context. At least that’s how it seems to me; hopefully I’m wrong and there’s a wealth of horror cinema telling all kinds of different stories.
To my highly-limited knowledge horror movies from Pakistan are rare, and I was happy to checkout Pari, currently streaming on Netflix.
Chillerpop 