Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

Turkish cinema is yet another hole in my film studies education. (Yeah, I actually have a degree in this stuff. No one has ever asked to see it.) I’ve seen clips of the Turkish Wizard of Oz and Turkish Batman and the like, but I have a feeling those are not representative examples of the current state of Istanbullywood. (I just made that up. At least I thought I did until I googled it and got seven hits.)

That being the case, I can’t really tell you where Araf (known in this country by the cheery title The Abortion) ranks on the spectrum of Turkish filmmaking. To my eyes, it looks like a very low-budget movie with a threadbare story, subpar acting and unimpressive special effects, but for all I know this is a top-of-the-line product in its country of origin. I would like to think not, and if the IMDb commenters claiming to be from Turkey are to be believed, I would be justified in thinking not. “Listen. I do not like to criticize my own country's movies for we are in the birthing pains of a stable film industry, but what the hell, this movie is horrific,” one earnestly proclaims. I feel his pain.

Araf tells the depressing tale of Eda (Akasya Asiltürkmen, who you will of course remember as the star of the TV series Felek ne demek), a dance student who learns too late that she is pregnant by her secret lover. Unable to have a legal abortion (a 1983 law made the procedure legal in Turkey during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, or later if the mother’s health is at risk), Eda submits to the back-alley variety. Three years later she is married to stalwart Cenk (Murat Yildirim) and expecting their child but alas, she suffers a miscarriage. At about this time she begins hallucinating (or is she?) that her aborted child is now a creepy little girl straight out of a J-horror movie.

This could be a scary scenario (or just an offensive one if you choose to read Araf as an anti-abortion screed), but the video effects are so poorly rendered, it just looks like a junior high AV club's remake of The Ring. There’s nowhere near enough story to sustain a 92-minute running time, so director Biray Dalkiran pads out the proceedings with extended shots of characters walking to their cars, getting in the cars, pulling out of their driveways, driving, pulling into driveways, getting out of their cars, walking up to doors, walking up long flights of stairs…I think you’ve got the picture.

Given my limited knowledge of the Turkish language, I can’t vouch for the quality of the English subtitles, so I don’t know who to credit with some nearly Ed Wood-ian dialogue, as in a scene in which Eda consults a shrink. “We cannot live free of space,” he tells her. “Space is our irrevocable past.” Yes. Yes it is.



Previously on Unwatchable:
57. Phat Girlz
58. Ed
59. Don’t Go in the Woods…Alone!
60. Carry On Columbus
61. Yu-Gi-Oh! The Movie