Under the Shadow
- heavy
- measured
- intense
- inventive
- bleak
Heavy, measured, measured horror / drama, inventive in texture. Nihilistic, intimate, cold, hand-scored across twelve axes of taste.
How every film is hand-scored →After Shideh's building is hit by a missile during the Iran-Iraq War, a superstitious neighbor suggests that the missile was cursed and might be carrying malevolent Middle-Eastern spirits. She becomes convinced a supernatural force within the building is attempting to possess her daughter Dorsa, and she has no choice but to confront these forces if she is to save her daughter and herself.
Our read · Under the Shadow (2016) reads as a heavy, measured, inventive horror · drama entry — measured in intensity, intimate in scope, cold in temperature, nihilistic in outlook, with a strong directorial signature. Hand-scored on twelve axes of taste — mood, pacing, weirdness, hope, stakes, humour, reality, density, warmth, auteur, intensity, and era — with a derived palette drawn from its dominant cinematography.
More info & search links
The shape of Under the Shadow
What watching it is actually like.
“You want wartime Tehran dread where a mother's fear becomes something uncanny.”
Skip it tonight — Skip if child-in-danger horror and missile-strike tension will keep you awake.
The reading.
Each axis is hand-scored — not derived from votes or genre averages. The marker shows where this film sits; the gradient fill uses the film's own cinematography palette.
Eight films that read most like this one.
Closeness in the twelve-axis space — how the film actually reads, not “people also liked.”
Discussion
What does your Movie DNA look like?
Rate a few films you've seen. We map your taste across the same twelve axes and find the films you'll actually want to watch tonight.
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