While we await the dvd/blu release of Can Evrenol's Baskin, let's bask in (apologies) the demonic glory of some contemporary Turkish horror posters and trailers. Oh, and while you're feasting your eyes you can stream/buy Volkan Akaalp's bangin' score for Baskin at Giallo Disco's bandcamp page. Get back to me after you've pummeled your brain with "Contact" and gotten down to the Frizzi-esque grooves of Vercetti Technicolor's remix of "Dawn of Gehenna" and Antoni Maiovvi's remix of "Blue". DJ Ghettoscraper's dub of "Lard & Blood" should get your blood pumping too. This is THE horror soundtrack to beat right now.
Over the last couple of years Türk korku has begun to enter the mainstream consciousness in a big way, gaining worldwide attention and notoriety thanks to some widely shared trailers. These trailers (most notably the gorgeous, hyper-kinetic trailers for Siccin 2 and Dabbe 6, embedded below along with the trailer for Baskin) are packed with startling and shocking imagery: djinn, witches, demonic possession, infanticide, occultism, madness, suicide, explosive violence. If there's a palpable sense of cultural angst seeping from these films, one need look no further than Turkey's southern border.
These images - derived almost entirely from Islamic mythology and folklore - are of course very familiar to western horror audiences, due to our shared Abrahamic lore. However, filtering our old religious tropes through the prism of Turkey's secular/Islamic society has the effect of breathing new life into proceedings. It's also important to note that culturally Turkey has one foot in Europe and the other in the Middle East, and these movies are very much a product of that diversity. To western audiences these movies are at once more culturally recognisable than the ubiquitous Asian folk horror, and yet tantalisingly exotic and weird.
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