It may star an actress widely regarded as one of today’s predominant scream queens, and its central character may visit a creepy old house in the woods within the first five minutes, but don’t be fooled: Ayla is pretty far removed from your standard ultra-low budget indie horror movie. Written, produced and directed by Elias, mononymous filmmaker behind 2012’s Gut (which I haven’t personally seen, but was reviewed by our old writer Tristan on release), the film – not to be confused with similarly titled 2017 production Ayla: The Daughter of War – is an abstract rumination on the long-standing impact of grief with a psychosexual edge, thick with incestuous overtones. All this being the case, Ayla is very much intended to push the audience way out of its comfort zone; and while it may be largely successful in this, it never gets quite so deep under the skin as we might hope.
Nicholas Wilder is Elton, a thirtysomething book store employee who lives alone, but is in what seems to be a happy, burgeoning relationship with Alex (Sarah Schoofs, who previously co-starred with Wilder in Gut). Decades earlier, Elton’s little sister Ayla died at the age of four, and it seems he has never gotten over this, as she remains prevalent in his thoughts at all times, to such an extent that he believes she has somehow returned to the world of the living. Via the wonders of modern technology, he’s mocked up an image of what his sister might have looked like in adulthood, and he is convinced he’s seen this woman in the real world. Elton is not entirely discouraged in this belief by his mother (Dee Wallace), a new ager who claims to have ‘spoken’ to her lost daughter in the years since her loss; however, his no-nonsense brother James (D’Angelo Midili) seems anxious to slap him in the face and break his delusion. However, Elton’s obsession grows so intense that, under seemingly inexplicable circumstances, he somehow wills that very woman (Tristan Risk) into being. She seems incapable of speech, yet she seems to know Elton, who is convinced that she is indeed Ayla reborn. Elton is eager to share this miracle with his loved ones, but it soon becomes clear that no one is quite so convinced as he that this stranger is really his sister.
As might be apparent from the synopsis, Ayla very much skirts that fine line between arthouse and grindhouse in the hopes of hooking both sides. The casting of Risk in the title role might reflect this: since breaking through in American Mary, she’s become a frequent and more than welcome presence in ultra-low budget genre fare, and seems to be very much the indie leading lady of choice when the role demands particular extremes. This is certainly the case with Ayla, which not only requires her to appear naked for much of screen time but also to embody, as the film’s marketing puts it, ‘obsession become flesh:’ the literal embodiment of her traumatised brother’s dreams, desires and/or delusions, and subsequently not quite a complete human being. It makes sense, then, that there’s an animal quality to Risk’s performance, but it’s probably for the best that this doesn’t see the film venture into more traditional horror terrain, with none of that come-back-wrong Pet Semetary-type stuff here. Still, on the subject of wrongness, there is of course the aforementioned incestuous angle. It’s clear from the beginning that Elton’s fixation on his lost sister is erotically charged, although their bond is by no means purely sexual; this is merely one aspect of a broader abyss within his being.
It’s hard to escape the feeling that at times Ayla is just aiming at creating shock value for its own sake, and while in part it’s an effective portrayal of the impact of grief, it often feels wilfully abstruse. That said, it comes closest to losing its way in its more grounded and accessible moments, notably a perhaps misjudged, light-hearted cameo from Bill Oberst Jr. All in all though, Ayla is a well-constructed and atmospheric film making good use of a talented cast, and while it’s bound to alienate vast swathes of the audience, it’s also likely to intrigue a great many.
Ayla is out now on VOD in the US.