Review of Baskin

At first, Baskin seems cohesive and straightforward as it follows a group of beat cops called to answer a backup call in a part of their jurisdiction with a shadowy reputation. The police come across an inexplicable confluence of events that toy with the idea of fate, cosmic powers, and hell itself and what comes across the screen quickly ramps from the mundane to the utterly maddening.

The Turkish production is one of the few films from that region of the world that got a Stateside release and it certainly lives up to it's promise. It owes a lot to films like Fulci's The Beyond and City of the Living Dead and the work of Lovecraft and Machen, in terms of its mixture of the concepts of blurred lines between realms, nightmarish landscapes, cults, inexplicable powers, and unrelenting grue. Baskin deftly manages to drag the audience along with the protagonists into the frenzy. Never do you feel comfortable, never safe, and never sure that you are grasping all that is being communicated.

Make no mistake, this is not an easy film to watch and definitely not for everyone. Puzzling, gruesome, startling, and phantasmagoric, Baskin is, however, a must for fans of horror.