Naciye – Movie Review

Luftu Emre Cicek writes and directs his first feature film, Naciye and while I usually have upmost respect for writer/directors, it’s evident that this is his first. Naciye gave the impression it is the result of a director wanting to make a film, not a writer wanting to tell a story.

The script focuses largely on a young Turkish couple moving into a house where, unbeknownst to them (somehow), the previous residents were murdered. Little do they know that a mysterious, seemingly unthreatening woman has decided that the house belongs to her, and will murder anyone who says otherwise. Cicek uses time jumps to tell origin stories and horror stories at the same time in an attempt to make the stories more complex, but essentially what I just wrote is all of it. The plot doesn’t accommodate for character development and barely introduces any obstacles for the protagonists. There’s a tedious and over-the-top backstory to the villains thrown in there in an attempt to characterise them, but all it really did was highlight how unoriginal the plot was. But a horror flick isn’t all about the storyline, it’s also about the emotional response and investment.

Sadly Naciye stumbles over this at the first hurdle; characterisation. Hugely dislikable characters don’t make for good tension. See, when you have a complete gobshite and a grumpy pregnant lady as the main protagonists, you’re enthusiasm for them to stay alive is abandoned. When you’re not interested in the well being of the protagonists in a horror movie, then it becomes an accidental comedy. There’s one particularly hilarious moment near the start of the third act where a character we saw earlier for two minutes turns up out of nowhere only to disappear one minute later, as if the director owed him a favour.

A horror movie can’t survive on the premise of ‘people want to kill other people’ alone; there needs to be a hook. Excellent French horror film Them (which feels like an inspiration for this one) had children as the main antagonist and removed the Americanised horror tropes for a much more engaging and relatable experience. Naciye has no such hook – it’s just an incredibly unthreatening middle-aged lady with bizarrely combat effective stealth abilities.

NACIYE- teaser from emrecicek on Vimeo.

So if there is so much wrong with the film, why aren’t I giving it a terrible rating? What really confused me was how enticing I found it. The characters are horribly dislikable and no one acts in a way that might help themselves (villain or protagonist) but the pacing of the film had me fixated. Slow scenes never lingered and action sequences were under-exaggerated making the whole thing feel authentic and discomforting (in a good way).

At the end of the day it’s a competently directed and entertainingly paced film involving great music and talented actors performing a script that exudes pointlessness and cliché. There are no lessons learned and any parts that try to push boundaries feel forced and desperate. By the end even the pacing that kept me intrigued became a mess of predictable and drawn out conclusions that brought up more questions than they answered. While I can’t say I disliked the filmmaking abilities, I can’t morally recommend the film based on its music and pacing alone.