Every year, horror fans and aficionados attempt to take on the daunting task of watching a horror movie for each day in the month of October. Aptly named31 Days of Horror, the challenge usually consists of viewers watching a mixture of their favorite classics, recent releases, and popular genre staples that may be new to them. In celebration of the spooky season, we at MovieWeb have curated our own suggestions for the month, providing a plethora of favorites from our contributing writers and editors. Check out our31 Days of Horrorposts every day this October, and embrace all the freaky found footage, vicious vampires, and stalking slashers you could ever hope for. Today, we kick offDay 24with the Assamese-language movie,Aamis.
Forbidden love and romancesare an age-old subject in storytelling. In cinema, it is all too common to frame them in rosy lenses, developing the myopic passion in beatific isolation, until the inevitable fallout — the classic example of tragedy, as a broad imitation of life’s endless disappointments. In reality, however, forbidden romance rarely comes with the rosy optimism of the typical romance film; in real life, forbidden romances are far uglier, with the potency to bring out the worst in people.
This truth rarely survives the typical case of forbidden love in cinema. The threat of ruin, the risk inherent in misguided passion, and the unfathomable darkness concealed in human desire — all these are commonly sidestepped to make way for grand proclamations about the power of love. Truly compelling cinema can be found when filmmakers choose to delve into the messy, complex realities of forbidden romances. And inAamis, forbidden desire morphs into something truly horrific.
Set in the state of Assam in northeastern India,Aamis, also known asRavening, is aromance horror moviethat plumbs the depths of evil that humans are capable of in the face of uncontrollable desire. The movie grounds itself in its Indian setting, bringing to life a truly disturbing take on the ways desire can express itselfin a repressive environment.
Sensuality as the Unthinkable Taboo
The events inAamisareframed by different social taboos— the friendship between a married, middle-aged woman and a 20-something bachelor; the class differences between them; and the taboo surrounding unusual foods, which eventually transforms into the film’s penultimate horror. But the most significant taboo among them all is sensuality as a whole. The movie follows the unnamable relationship between Nirmali (Lima Das), a married, middle-aged pediatrician, and the young student Sumon (Arghadeep Baruah), who bond over a shared love of unusual meat dishes. But of the two, Nirmali is the clear protagonist of the story, and it is her hidden desires that become the emotional heart of the movie, driving it steadily forward to its disturbing conclusion.
From all outward appearances, Nirmali is a successful, self-satisfied woman with a stable personal life. She even wants to believe it herself. But in bits and pieces, the movie gradually draws out various lines pointing to a complex discontent at the center of the story. For Nirmali, indulgence is her biggest taboo. She lives in what she believes is a happy marriage with a doctor who is passionate about his humanitarian work, supporting him as he goes away on long stretches on his humanitarian missions. But she secretly feels a distain towards her husband who never listens to her wants and desires. She wants to believe that she fits into her husband’s high society, but nurses an unconscious desire to live a more indulgent lifestyle.
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The various idiosyncrasies of Nirmali’s personality gradually begin to appear as expressions of this repressed desire. Her paradoxical repulsion to eating with her hands clashes with her desire to taste unusual meats, an unconscious overcompensation over a perceived fault in herself. At the same time, her friends’ group seems to have a peculiar culture where infidelity is normalized, but she continues to keep them around despite sticking out like a sore thumb with her morally upright personality. Simply put, Nirmali doesn’t want to believe that she is unhappy, but a chance meeting with a charming young man poses an unforeseen temptation in her life that she cannot say no to.
Where Each Glance and Each Gesture Has a Meaning
Aamiscreates a powerful emotional foundation in Nirmali’s repressed sensuality, making it the driving force behind the movie’s plot developments. But it is the way that the movie builds this emotional plot that the movie truly appears masterful. Soon after coming into acquaintance, the leading duo gets into the habit of going on meat-eating adventures, tasting everything from freshly caught river fish to bat meat. From the very beginning of these adventures, the duo’s body language locks onto each other like two pieces of a moving puzzle.
The film’s writer and director, Bhaskar Hazarika, holds a tight reign over these aspects of communication, eliciting beautifully choreographed performances from the actors that spill intense emotion onto each scene. In their very first meat-eating adventure, Nirmali and Sumon go to a popular catfish restaurant, and begin to perfectly mirror each other as theyindulge in the tasty dish, looking up and away at the same time, and raising their hands in synchronization. By the time they sit down to eat bat meat, their most transgressive food experience yet, their relationship has escalated to the point where they can no longer deny the indecorous nature of their unnamable relationship. Moving in rhythmic oppositions, they steal glances one after the other, their gazes burning with a disturbing look of voyeuristic pleasure, before they look away in shame.
Held back by social constraints, the non-verbal takes central stage every time Nirmali and Sumon are on-screen together. A stark intensity builds up as the eyes well up with the object of horror: pure, unadulterated desire. Bolstered by such rigorously exact lines of non-verbal communication, the relationship between the two leads escalates uncontrollably with each scene, one look at a time.
The Unbearable Intensity of Impending Doom
With all this focus on the forbidden romance, the overt expression of horror doesn’t figure into the plot until halfway into the movie. Crossing invisible lines one after the other, the two lead characters finally reach the point where a moment of casual physical touch is considered inappropriate by Nirmali. In a hazy dream the same night, Sumon comes up with the idea that changes their fates once and for all: he will feed her his own flesh. But what goes on until this turning point in the movie is far from a conventional story about infidelity. Rather, this is what makes this a horror film truly worth watching.
Aamisis a case where the two genres of a cross-genre horror film do not sit separately in any meaningful sense. Instead, the romance transmutes to horror with a disturbing fluidity. The movie locks onto a definite track at the very beginning that is set to end with a vivid, visceral imagination of the dark core of human desire. But the scent of this eventual reveal chases the viewer from the very beginning, when Nirmali uncharacteristically misses her stop while being walked back to her clinic by Sumon.
With the same delicate precision that he applies to craft the personal interactions between Sumon and Nirmali, Hazarika brings together an unbearable sense of impending doom upon the proceedings that genuinely suffocates you in anxiety.Aamis, from the very beginning, leans into the forbidden nature of their growing proximity. The masterfully deliberate cinematography, the similarly dubious piano soundtrack that sounds simultaneously ominous and romantic, create a dense, palpable aura of terror and anxiety that is thick enough to cut through.
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At the same time, the rapid pace with which the intimacy between Nirmali and Sumon grows creates a sense of abject, terrifying helplessness, like watching a wildfire grow uncontrollably. Even as they begin to cross subtle boundaries in their text messages, even as they seek out exotic meats in increasingly intimate venues, you get the sense that the true monster of this film, temptation, has already won. You just brace for the inevitable disaster, but with the constant juxtaposition of sexual desire with increasingly transgressive meats, you can’t shake off the feeling that the inevitable disaster is going to be a truly dark one.
Cannibalism as Symbolic Sex
Aside from all its potent filmcraft, a standout detail from the movie is the fact that itsincoporation of cannibalism, by itself, is no elaborate allegory. Instead, it is a direct, 1:1 analogy for sex — an outrageous (but in a good way) bit of simplicity and straightforwardness that the movie inserts amidst all the powerful tonal work. The fever dream that gives Sumon the idea of cannibalism is an overtly sexual one, and he even dreams that Nirmali welcomes such a perverse advancement. And so the first act of cannibalism in the movie is Nirmali eating Sumon’s meat, harvested from his inner thigh. Unable to express his feelings through a conventional sexual interaction, this is his way of expressing his feelings symbolic.
Equally disturbing is the fact that Nirmali has a strangely positive reaction to eating that dish; it was as if their ultimate doom was meant to be. Accompanied by passionate strings as the background music, her first time tasting human flesh brings her mind to a standstill as she suddenly experiences that sense of inner freedom and indulgence that she had unconsciously been pining for, in the most transgressive human act. Through this shared secret act, one that they can never share with anyone else, Nirmali finally discovers a medium through which she can openly express her desire for sensuality — where romance seamlessly transmutes to horror.
