Turkish filmmaker Can Evrenol directed one of the most unsettling horror movies of the last decade. I caught his gruesome 2015 horror-crime flick Baskin as part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness program, and it was a wild experience. Midnight Madness screenings attract hardcore audiences who live for gory horror movies and violent crime flicks, and it speaks volumes that Baskin left the raucous crowd shaken. Let’s just put this out there right now: Evrenol’s latest feature, Girl With No Mouth is no Baskin. So breath easy.
Evrenol is an exceptional visual storyteller, and now he’s putting those skills to work in something more “whimsical.” Girl With No Mouth, is a kids-on-a-mission adventure set in a post-apocalyptic world. Although Girl With No Mouth seems to have has lots of Amblin movie-style influences, it still features Evrenol’s trademarks: tension, atmosphere, and body horror.
The film sees the eponymous girl without a mouth Perihan (Elif Sevinç) venture across a nuked wasteland, where the military hunts down children born missing body parts. On her journey, she meets a group of kids who are also missing pieces of their faces. Together they struggle to evade capture while making their way to “The Lost City.”
Girl With No Mouth trailer:
What sets this movie apart from other dystopic flicks is that its influences skew closer to adventure films like The Goonies than bleak, post-apocalyptic thrillers like Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Evrenol tells a hopeful tale set in a harsh, war-torn world. Despite putting viewers on edge with more than a few disturbing images, Girl With No Mouth bills itself as a family-friendly film.
Evrenol once again invites viewers to experience a brutal hellscape, because that’s just what this horror maestro does. But this time, he fills your head with something besides nightmare fuel.
Girl With No Mouth synopsis:
The coming-of-age story of Perihan: a girl born without a mouth, on a quest to escape the wasteland. Following a nuclear disaster, the military – led by her uncle – hunt down children exposed to radiation and born with missing body parts. To protect his daughter, Perihan’s father raised her in a shelter hidden in the middle of the forest. Her journey begins when they are finally discovered, and her father is killed by his own brother. As she escapes into the forest, she comes across a gang of three boys, also born with parts of their faces missing. On the run from Perihan’s evil ruthless and murderous uncle, they embark together on a journey that will change their lives, to The Lost City and beyond…
Girl With No Mouth arrives on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital in North America on December 08th, 2020.
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