There will be blood if Samara Weaving is in a movie, and she plays the titular protagonist in “Azrael” (2024). Two hundred years after The Rapture, a cult is hunting down a couple, Azrael and Kenan (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) so Azrael can be offered as a sacrifice to some burnt looking humanoids wandering the woods, but Azrael is no one’s sacrificial lamb or scape goat. She is determined to survive and rescue her partner. Will she succeed?

Growing up fundamentalist and absorbing all the Rapture/Book of Revelation fanfic makes me the wrong person to review “Azrael.” The Rapture means God removed all the saved people before the tribulation starts on Earth, and anyone who subsequently gets saved will be persecuted. The willfully unsaved will take the mark of the Beast and live well. I signed up for three reasons: Weaving, matriarchal cult & evil. I did not even watch a trailer. My bad. So if you are like me, to enjoy this film, you need to abandon your preconceptions of the original Biblical fan fiction and just go with writer Simon Barrett and director E.L. Katz’s creation without asking too many questions otherwise you are bound to be frustrated.

There are plenty of reasons to trust Barrett: “You’re Next” (2011), a couple of segments in “V/H/S” (2012), “V/H/S/2” (2013), and “V/H/S/94” (2021) and “The Guest” (2014). There are a couple of solid reasons to run screaming from Barrett’s work: “Blair Witch” (2016), and his most recent creation, “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” (2024). When our man slips, he falls off the cliff. Barrett cannot half-ass anything. He is either going to be terrific or awful.

While tons of writers are shirking their duties and not bothering to give their main characters names, even though there is almost no dialogue in “Azrael,” everyone has a name even though the average moviegoer would not know it unless they had IMDb and Wikipedia open while watching. Fortunately, I am that kind of viewer. Azrael, her man and the cult sport cross scars on their necks because their vocal cords were removed. In their world, talking is a sin. Is it because the Burnt Ones are attracted to sound? Some theorize that, but it sounds too much like a return to pre-Tower of Babel times where everyone speaks the same language, i.e. none, so they are unified. If you watch this movie, you will not realize that the title is the protagonist’s name, why the cult is chasing Azrael and her boyfriend, or that these humanoids are called the Burnt Ones. If you need more context than a group of people want to kill her, the Burnt Ones are attracted to blood, and Azrael refuses to give up, then you should probably skip it. If you do not follow my advice, prepare to watch Azrael have the worst day ever that would land the average person in a hospital for months or under the dirt forever. Azrael gets into car accidents, falls from trees, takes a frying pan to the face, etc.

For back story, you better be prepared to do an impression of Kevin Costner in “JFK” (1991) playing the Zapruder film and keep rewinding and freeze framing to examine the drawings on the last standing wooden structure of the cult’s encampment. I did not bother. Miriam (Vic Carmen Sonne) is clad in white, pregnant and issues order. When not monopolizing the camp’s art supplies, she is apparently receiving the word of their god, which they believe is the real God, through a hole in the structure. Considering that the filmmakers reveal her baby at the end, it can be called a glory hole though it only has a whooshing wind sound emitting from it. Apparently, wind is very important, and maybe it is a reference to Satan being the “prince of the power of the air” because the hole is dark even when it is a daylight out, and the air is still. Is it a portal to another dimension? Honestly while watching “Azrael,” it only slightly occurred to me that the wind was a portend, and not just, ahem, natural. All of this occurs in the woods after all. It gets windy. I did not think that it was so deep.

There are other characters. Josefine (Katarlina Unt), a black coat wearing leader on the outside, who takes orders from Miriam, who will whoop your ass if you fail. Josefine is caring for some sick woman in a tent and clearly cares about her, so these people are not just mindless killing machines, but have a motivation. Luther (Eero Milonoff) is a lead henchman who hunts them down and is so focused on his job that he has no situational awareness. Sevrin (Phong Giang) is a zealous henchman who does not let a little thing like getting severely injured stand in the way of trying to kill Azrael. The whole camp wants her dead. Though a little monotonous, the stakes keep rising, so it is easy to be curious how she’ll get out of each predicament.

The Burnt People are comparatively reasonable though in a scene where Kenan is a sitting duck and may as well be on a buffet table since his hand is nailed to a tree (like Jesus on the cross GET IT! Eye roll), the creatures jump and butcher a henchman instead who seemed to have no wounds. Imagine having an icon on the payroll and using him for bait. Stewart-Jarrett is coming off a starring role in “Femme” (2023), but he is best known for playing Curtis in a British TV Series, “Misfits.”  Back to the Burnt People. They attack anytime except when they don’t. Eventually they offer a clue to Azrael on how she can survive, and a story begins to shape at the eleventh hour. By the ending, the story becomes clearer, but it is too little, too late.

The best part of “Azrael” is when the filmmakers show a glimpse of what life is like outside this community. It is kind of hilarious to think that this community is so dramatic while there is a whole world outside totally unphased at post-Rapture life. There are people still enjoying electricity, music and smooth necks to contain their intact vocal cords. Demian (Peter Christoffersen) speaks Estonian, and there are no subtitles so the audience will still be as clueless as Azrael, which is a good move, but without a visible mark of the Beast, the logic of this period is still a mystery. How are some people affected and not others? Would the unaffected look for Demian? Do they know about the Burnt people or are these humanoids restricted to that area or connected to the cult? I vote for the latter because of the ending.

“Azrael” could be perfectly thought out in the filmmakers’ imagination, but we do not live there and only get to see what is on screen. While it is impressive that every actor can use their physicality and facial expressions to convey everything, the entire enterprise is two-dimensional and an underwritten sketch which resorts to ending on a sensational note to distract its audience from noticing the shaky logistics and logic of this mythology.

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Miriam gives birth to a goat baby and promptly kills herself because it is the Anti-Christ. Like, dude, you were left behind, and if you did not have a gentleman caller, you should expect to give birth to the Anti-Christ. 2024 is absolutely teeming with Anti-Christs: “The First Omen” (2024) and “Immaculate” (2024). The best Anti-Christ ever is technically the second coming of Mother of Sighs in “Suspiria” (2018). A half human, half jackal is not even making the grade in this market. You’re going to have to do better than slapping a goat head on a baby that baas instead of cries.

The Burnt People apparently worship this kid (get it). Azrael killed everyone in the camp and adopted the kid (GET IT) after Miriam slit her own throat, so she is queen of the forest, but like, what now? No one is killing you, but what is the plan because the post-Rapture Anti-Christ is really late in his arrival, and I’m uncertain if the average person is going to find him appealing. Now what?

I find it aggravating that people just slap Rapture and the Anti-Christ in a movie and think that it innately gives it meaning. It does not. If you are going to world build using these elements, please consider a cohesive story then communicate it to the audience. What does the kid do when it gets older? “Rosemary’s Baby” (1968) and all these films feared the Anti-Christ. “Suspiria” is the only one who reimagined the Anti-Christ as a saviour figure then showed us what that looked like. “Azrael” seems to be leaning in that direction, but other than saving Azrael and giving purpose to the Burnt People, why would a kid be appealing to the masses? Because joining the circus seems anti-climactic. This movie needs work.