D@bbe (2006)

I had D@bbe in my piles of unwatched DVD’s for quite a while now, but in my ongoing project to watch movies in my collection I haven’t it just jumped out at me, so why not? Directed by Hasan Karacadag, this is a movie clearly inspired by the Japanese horror tradition, but as usual with Turkey mixed with local traditions and Islamic symbolism – something many other countries in the west doing their best to forget, just copying US production without any local flavour.

One unlucky guy accepts a job creating a web page (I think). But after a little while he starts to act strange and finally takes suicide with sticking a big knife thru his neck. His friends want to find the reason for this, and not soon after that they begin to see horrible visions and terrible ghost-like creatures crawling out from walls and floors. They are fed with more and more clues, and soon they one by one is dying or disappearing, or just acting very weird…

I was sceptic at first. It feels like a VERY cheap movie, shot digital and with some uneven editing choices. But after 30 minutes or so I suddenly felt how I was drawn into the movie and both story and the technical issues came together to something quite impressive. The visuals and pacing is obviously inspired by Japanese movies like Ringu or Ju-On, it’s a mystery that very slowly unfolds itself without explaining too much. I hate when movies make everything so damn clear. I want to think a little bit for myself.

By the way, I think the digital look of the movie is very fitting. It’s a movie that focuses a lot on emails, computers, monitors, cell phones. It enhances the digital coldness of the horror and works very fine with the modern locations and simple digital effects. The effects are cheap, but gets more and more effective the longer the movie goes. The manipulation of faces and ghosts actually is very good, but don’t expect Hollywood-effects. This is cruder, but also quite scary.

At two hours D@bbe certainly takes its time, but if you get past that first half hour and watch it with concentration, this lives up to it’s premise and goes for a dark, down-beat ending far away from the normal mainstream productions.