Baskin (2015)

Dir: Can Evrenol

Five police officers dine at a restaurant. There's Yavuz (Muharrem Bayrak) the hot head who goes all Joe Pesci on the waiter when he laughed at Yavuz' tale of hooking up with a transvestite prostitute. Seyfi (Sabahattin Yakut) sits apart from the others as his head is pounding and he is feeling nauseous. Apo (Fatih Dokgöz), a character so forgettable I can't think of anything to write about him. The wizened bossman Remzi (Ergun Kuyucu) who has taken new recruit Arda (Gorkem Kasal) under his wing. And that is it for character background and development.

A call comes in to provide backup for another police unit at an abandoned police station in Inceagac. En route, Seyfi runs over a man and crashes the police van into a river. As the loss of the vehicle is only a minor set back (!) and unable to find the man they ran over, the squad continues to Inceagac on foot. They enlist a gypsy they encounter to lead them to the old police station. Once at the location they wander the dark corridors, get separated, and captured by a Satanic cult led by the Father (Mehmet Cerrahoglu who suffers from a skin condition giving him an otherworldly look).

I have no idea what this film is suppose to be about. Is the abandoned police station a doorway to Hell? Is the Father Lucifer or a minion of his? Other than Yavuz acting like a jerk, we are not shown or told why the officers would end up in what is presumably Hell. The ending is the all familiar time loop where one of the characters seemingly escapes Hell but meets up with himself on route to Hell. Do we really need to see this trope yet again?

BASKIN is a well shot film especially considering the budget. The amount of gore and that there is female nudity surprised me. I would have thought that a Turkish film, one of the few to receive a U.S. release, would be a bit more conservative. The plot is such a mess that I grew irritated trying to piece together its message. The paper thin characters did not help. It was only the promise of more graphic gore that kept me from fast forwarding.

*1/2 out of ****