Rhys Handley

The most effective horror comes from the unknown. In Visar Morina’s dramatic thriller, Xhafer is a Serbian pharmaceutical engineer who now lives in Germany with his wife and three children. One day, he finds a rat hanging from his front gate. The next day, his company emails are mysteriously missing. As Xhafer seeks answers to his wife’s and co-workers’ increasing consternation, a finely drawn portrait of alienation, belonging, and the safety in knowing one’s place emerges.

Hybrid documentaries often use their newly-filmed footage to advance narrative drama in the absence of its initial existence; Radu Jude’s Uppercase Print, on the contrary, takes a decidedly uncinematic approach to melding past, present, document, and comment.

Abel Ferrara’s latest film blends a quintessential man vs. nature struggle and the age-old search for life’s meaning with a heavy dose of metaphysics. Siberia, however, does nothing narratively or thematically with its ideas or aesthetics. Its uneven, unpleasant pacing is the immediate first strike against it. The only impact of its jump scares and abrupt tonal changes are to shock the audience; once the heartbeat steadies, it becomes painfully apparent that nothing meaningful has occurred.