NACIYE (2015 - Turkish)

Studio:       Shami Media Group
Director:    Lutfu Emre Cicek
Writer:       Lutfu Emre Cicek
Producer:  Lutfu Emre Cicek
Stars:     Derya Alabora, Esin Harvey, Gorkem Mertsoz, Refik Zafer Cicek, Erdogan Unlu, Ozlem Durmaz, Ilgin Cakur, Oguzhan Tolon

Review Score:

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Summary:

A pregnant couple finds their rental home occupied by a crazed woman who claims she is the house’s rightful owner.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

NOTE: Scenes are arranged chronologically.

As a young girl, Naciye and her brother Faytoncu witness their father forcing himself on their mother and burning her with cigarettes during sex. Naciye poisons her father’s tea. Naciye is in the midst of seducing Faytoncu when Mother discovers her husband dead. Realizing what happened, Mother attacks Naciye and Naciye pushes the woman off the balcony to her death.

Now middle-aged and squatting in the home despite it being taken from her through terms of a will, Naciye murders rental agent Mr. Cumhur when he tries forcing her to leave the house. Naciye also murders Basak and Mehmet, a couple staying in the house.

Having rented the property from Mr. Cumhur, Bertran brings his pregnant wife Bengi, who had a secret affair with her coworker Cem, to the house. Naciye seemingly kills Bertran while Bengi locks herself in the bathroom.

Cem arrives at the island home in search of Bengi. Bengi flees the house and rushes to Cem, but Cem is murdered by Faytoncu. Bengi returns to the house and fights off an attack by Naciye. Faytoncu rescues Naciye while Naciye screams for her son.

Bertran recovers and Faytoncu captures him. Naciye pleads with Bengi when Bengi captures Naciye’s mongoloid son and holds a knife to him. After Faytoncu shoots Bertran, Bengi slits the son’s throat and escapes outside.

Naciye follows Bengi and attacks. In the morning, Naciye buries Bengi alive alongside Bertran’s dead body. Naciye and Faytoncu drink tea on the patio as they continue living in the house.

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Review:

With his pregnant wife Bengi growing increasingly distant, Bertran thinks the perfect boomerang for their marriage might be an island getaway in a quaint and quiet rental home.  What Bertran doesn’t know is that the upcoming baby is not to blame for his wife’s behavior.  That’s the least of his worries right now.  Something else Bertran doesn’t know is that Naciye, the woman who has called the rental property home since childhood, never left when the deed changed hands.  And Naciye deals with presumed trespassers in ways that repeatedly result in a great deal of bloodshed and a fresh mound of dirt in the backyard.

Turkish horror film “Naciye” (pronounced Nah-gee-yeh – or like Nadia with a “j”) is a different type of home invasion thriller in that the invader is already in the house from the start.  If you view Naciye as the intruder, that is.

Equal parts antagonist and protagonist, Naciye is more complex than most movie killers.  “Naciye” is a movie decidedly about its title character and treats her as both villain and victim, sinister and sympathetic.  Working in tandem with the script, exceptional actress Derya Alabora builds motivation behind violent intent extending far beyond simple psychosis singularly focused on meaningless murder.

Writer/director Lutfu Emre Cicek is open about the influences on “Naciye.”  Even closed eyes can see comparisons to the signature suspense of Roman Polanski and overt similarities to Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s French frenzy “Inside.”  Of his film, Cicek explains that he “wanted to make something that would be familiar to horror fans in its homages to horror movie tropes but maintain its Turkish touches, like the island setting, the soap opera-esque hysteria of the leads, Naciye’s style of clothing and the music.”

Those “Turkish touches” are crucial for giving the film an essential edge required to buoy above that familiarity.  “Naciye” is not as nerve-rattling as “The Strangers” or as brutal as “Inside” (review here), but it has a distinct and welcome weirdness stemming from the exotic eye of a unique vision.

Most of the film takes place in the present, yet a horse-drawn carriage standing in for a taxi, perhaps commonplace in the culture or region, reads like an unusual anachronism.  A xylophone-infused score provides offbeat audio without being clownish.  Sights and sounds are just odd enough for “Naciye” to deliver the kind of subtle strangeness that western audiences can only get from a suspense thriller made in Turkey.

Some genre fans balk at the prospect of subtitles and tones with foreign flavors, but “Naciye” maintains accessibility through that familiarity Cicek mentions.  Yet despite entrancing embellishments like a fourth wall-breaking look at the lens or bizarre scratching noises accompanying the soundtrack, a scattered story structure takes experimental artistry further than the material can support.

Bertran and Bengi are not the only unsuspecting renters to earn Naciye’s evil eye, and their tale of trapped terror is not the only timeline featured in the film.  “Naciye” bounds back and forth between several storylines unfolding out of chronological order and that stagger detracts from the intensity of the core couple’s ordeal as well as from Naciye’s mania.  While the pieces ultimately add up to a narrative not as confusing as it could be, there is at least one superfluous thread cluttering up the film’s flow.

Arrange events in sequence while removing the foreign film flair and “Naciye” can be reduced to a crazed woman tormenting people unfortunate enough to rent a house without knowing she lives there.  That’s not the movie “Naciye” is, but it bears mentioning that the simple story substance supplementing the style doesn’t have heft to stand on its own as frightening fiction.

“Naciye” is a movie whose value as art and/or entertainment is whatever the viewer wishes to make of the mood.  There is much to appreciate in how the film is presented, though that doesn’t equate to execution that is always satisfying.  Sometimes it seems like “Naciye” is forcing itself to be “different” when it already has an advantage as Turkish horror with an unlikely global audience.  “Naciye” remains an artistically interesting debut for Lutfu Emre Cicek, although focusing fragmented flourishes with fuller purpose would put more force behind the film.

Review Score:  60

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