Macabre…ish Horror Review: Baskin

Baskin, 2015/ 1 hr 37 min

 

A child is awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of his mother and her abrupt silence. While he’s in the living room, a bloody arm reaches for him from his bedroom and he screams for his mother’s help.

 

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A bucket of meat is delivered to a cafe by a hooded person, dining in that evening are five police officers: Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu), Arda (Gorkem Kasal), Yavuz (Muharrem Bayrak), Apo (Fatih Dokgöz), and Seyfi (Sabahattin Yakut) and they’re sharing tales over their meal. Seyfi, who’s been feeling unwell, finally runs to the bathroom to be sick and screams in the mirror, he says he felt like he was losing his mind. Meanwhile, Yavuz starts an unnecessary fight with the owner’s son.

 

The cops get a radio call to a town known for it’s mysteries. Suddenly they can’t get any signal, and then someone runs across the road. When they are out looking for the culprit, something hits the side of their bus, hard. And there’s a huge number of frogs on the side of the road. Seyfi then has a disturbing vision of a bloody person, materializing in front of the van and after he runs them over, they veer into the lake.

 

Arda (was the child from the beginning of the story) was taken in as a child by his, now boss, Remzi, after his parents died. He tells him his childhood story about Coskun and how it was in his room and then later, hit by a car. He explains how he always feels like he’s dreaming. And it’s always the same dream. Then Remzi asks if Arda sees anyone in the room, other than them. First, Arda sees nothing, suddenly someone’s there, a hooded figure. Remzi says Arda is the first person to ever see it other than him. Then fluid starts flooding the place and Arda opens his eyes underwater and he’s being hauled out of the lake.

 

Now stranded, the cops make their way to Inceagac. They head to an abandoned building that happens to be the site of the distress call. It’s an old Ottoman era police station and they are immediately freaked out. They find an empty cop car and inside the building, they find the driver, in a catatonic state.

 

In the corridor, they find a clutch of bloody eggs on the muddy floor which causes one of them to vomit. The catatonic officer is in a room, beating his head on the wall. When asked about the rest of his unit, whining, he lifts his arm and points to another door that leads down many flights of stairs.

 

Seyfi stays behind with the traumatized cop but then leaves him to follow a frog into another room. Inside are cells with bloody, bound and masked people performing what can only be described as extreme sadistic bondage to possibly willing participants but it’s hard to say. They rush to Seyfi and over power him and in the other room, the catatonic cop laughs a pitiful, sad laugh.

 

The other cops make it down to a room with candles and strange erotic images on the walls. Around the corner is the other unit, nude, covered in blood, wrapped in cloth or plastic and hanging like sides of beef. Further down the hall is another pile of bodies and a nude and bloody person eating and hacking up a body on a table. And that’s besides the barely alive woman in the cage.

 

One of the wrapped, chained bodies is alive and holding a huge sledge hammer and cracks    Apo in the head. Arda shoots up the room and he and the others take off running with bloody occultists chasing them on all fours.

 

Ardo loses track of his colleagues when he looks behind him, he sees his young self in his old house. The arm reaching out to him and pulling young Arda into his bedroom. Then adult Arda coughs…

 

…and opens his eyes back at the cafe with Remzi. He’s confused and doesn’t understand what’s happening. Remzi says everything isn’t so easy to understand. They are at a crossroads and he doesn’t know how it will turn out. He says they were summoned to that location and that there was no radio call.

 

Then Arda returns to a ritual being performed and he and his team are all tied up while frenzied, muddy occultists rally. Someone descends the spiral staircase, the hooded figure, known as Father (Mehmet Cerrahoglu), he is attended by a large milky eyed man (Sevket Suha Tezel). Yavuz protests their treatment loudly, yelling that they can’t do this to law men.

 

Apo hangs limply, chained to the wall, Father rips open a wound in his gut and yanks his large intestine free. Rolling them up like a cord around his hand. Father, then walks up to Yavuz and standing on a stool, questions him. And with a knife, Father relieves Yavuz of his eyes. Like so many of the congregants, Yavuz is now blind but still alive. He’s been initiated and welcomed into the fold.

 

Then a blind woman with an animal skull on her face is led out on all fours and Yavuz is place inside of her and forced to perform as he cries.  When it’s over he slumps down dead and a spider crawls out of his mouth. Father announces that his heart wasn’t fully open.

 

Arda is next. Father licks that bloody knife and touches his forehead. He then goes to Remzi, thanks him for raising Arda, then cuts through his throat. Father bathes himself in Remzi’s blood as Arda cries out in anguish.

 

Then Arda opens his eyes at that cafe again but this time he seems to be alone. But he’s not, Remzi, is on the floor in a pool of his own blood. Father walks in and as he does, Remzi says he has one thing left for him and Arda pulls a key out of the gash in Remzi’s neck and he stabs it through the keyhole in Father’s skull. Ardo opens his eyes back in the Ottoman building, Father’s down and Arda is free of his chains. Arda grabs Father’s stool and beats the little man to a pulp with it.

 

The congregants bow and scatter as Arda leaves. He exits out of his old bedroom door and out of the front door of the Ottoman building, laughing maniacally. And as he hobbles down the road, a police van comes toward him, he waves it down and is run over. The van veers into the lake.

 

 

This Turkish surrealist horror was directed by Can Evrenol. This movie eases you in slowly into graphic terror and ritual murder, torture, cannibalism, male and female rape and debauchery. It is bloody, gory and disturbing. The physical effects are very good. You’re gonna need a strong stomach for this one.