2 out of 5

Directed by: Can Evrenol

Guy: what is Baskin?  From the wiki: Baskin in Turkish means a violent downward blow, or, in context, repression, or descent.  That, admittedly, sums things up effectively.

Baskin has a lot of promise, because its core is a solid short story of visual horror: five policemen get a scrambled call to a bad part of town, their ride is waylaid by mysterious street-crossing folk and creepy locals collecting muddy frogs, and then the source of the call is inevitably a rundown house that, like, contains Hell.  And Evrenol’s take on Hell is an impressive one, fulfilling all the Silent Hill mucky muck visuals that were excised from those flicks in favor of CGI.  But, for those not covering their eyes when the bondage gear and blood hits the screen – which is rather deep into the film – you’ll recognize the low budget limitations: the implied stuff that we never really see; the repeated use of those impressive visuals which leads to them becoming a lot less effective.  That’s not to say Baskin doesn’t apply its moneys well, but stretched out to a needless 90 minute runtime – because what I’ve described above is it, ladies and gents – there’s no plot besides call, house, and some Hell rituals – the interesting surreality that occasionally pops up, suggesting things to be dreams within dreams within dreams is wasted.  People scream, and get stabbed, and some industrial music plays, and we’re waiting for something else to occur, with the ho-hum revelation that it ain’t gonna happen.

And once that settles in, no amount of poopy-smeared walls and guts hanging from chains is going to help things.

This was well edited and produced, and committed with passion.  Unfortunately, slowing things down and repeating them to make that movie-length mark stretches the positives into an underwhelming final product.