The Vile Review: Emirati Horror Hits Home

Majid Al Ansari’s The Vile smartly and scarily shines a light on a particular indignity suffered by women in a particularly patriarchal society.

The Emirati director’s second feature may boast the largesse of Western crew and producers of such hits as Weapons and Insidious, but Al Ansari carries the tropes and style of contemporary mainstream horror over to his homeland, and uses them to effectively display the unexpected indignity of just trying to be a wife and mother in the U.A.E.

The Vile has an eye on a Western audience, and from the start underlines the persistent fear lying in the unknowns of a different culture. The film opens with a mother and daughter giving each other the heebie-jeebies in the dark corners of their home, a setting that will house bigger and more fundamental scares as time goes on. Amani (Bdoor Mohammad) is a devoted wife to Khalid (Jasem Alkharraz) and loving mother to Noor (Iman Doghoz), but their happy home life is disrupted from out of nowhere when Khalid announces he’s taking a second wife. Enter Zahra (Sarah Taibah), a younger woman who can give Khalid the male he desires. Bigamy is literally a foreign concept to Western audiences, but Al Ansari weaponizes it to give heft to his scares. 

It’s not long after Zahra moves into the family home that Amani’s horror becomes more literalised. Paranoid explorations of dark corridors culminate in sightings of a djinn-like creature that Amani is convinced Zahra has brought with her. The Vile may be another metaphor for trauma, but the active response the characters have to the new presences in their house and lives marks the film as something a little different, especially in the context of a society where women’s concerns and responses are less likely to be entertained. The preservation of one’s sense of self becomes a daily grind for multiple generations; while Amani battles her paranoia at home, Noor is teased by her bullying classmates for her new home situation. Mother and daughter battle for their lives, both literally and metaphorically. As Amani declares, “my dignity is all I have left!”, but even that is under threat.

It is to Al Alsari’s credit that he is able to convey this threat to dignity so effectively. For most of The Vile, Amani grows paranoid as the child grows inside Zahra. Mohammad is fantastic in her feature debut, her eyes bugging out with increasing terror as the film goes on. Alongside her, Doghoz and Taibah offer shades to their characters to transcend any tropes that might be expected of the endangered daughter and possible succubus respectively.

The tensions between the three lead to some eerie moments and setpieces, the best one involving Amina investigating a bump in the night. It should ensure audience members unplug their television before going to bed. The scares are accentuated by the moody interior lighting of cinematographer Benjamin Kirk Nielsen, and the lived-in production from designer Benedikt Lange. Amina’s home is given a look of the everyday; this could be your home that’s slowly being possessed.

For all its effective chills, Al Ansari’s methods are very much in the vein of the latest Blumhouse release, with jump scares, children under threat and plot developments that exist purely out of generic obligation. This isn’t a bad thing in the context of The Vile; they’re old methods in a new setting, and they are scarily effective in helping the film make its point. Thanks to the cast, solid filmmaking and a definite sense of purpose, The Vile gets under the skin in ways at once expected and unfamiliar.

The Vile will be screened at the BFI London Film Festival on 15-16 October, 2025.