'Baab' Review: A Deep look at the Architecture of Loss
- Romey Norton
- 16 hours ago
- 3 min read
By Romey Norton - January 19, 2025
With Baab, director Nayla Al Khaja delivers a striking piece of psychological dark fantasy that resists easy categorisation. Selected for the 2025 Cairo International Film Festival, the film is as an intimate yet unsettling exploration of grief. Rather than guiding the viewer gently through loss, Baab demands that they sit inside it. Some viewers might find it a slow burner, but there's enough intrigue to keep you going until it's shocking, emotional end.
The film centres on a woman shattered by the sudden death of her twin sister. Almost immediately, the audience is plunged into her subjective experience, where sound, memory, and perception collapse into one another. The persistent hum of tinnitus in her left ear becomes the film’s most potent motif: an invisible affliction that mirrors the way grief announces itself uninvited, inescapable, and deeply personal.
Baab structures its descent through three emotional states: depression, anger, and bargaining. These emotions bleed into one another, looping and mutating as the protagonist’s world grows increasingly surreal. Al Khaja visualises grief as a force that presses in from the edges of the frame, distorting space and time.
Shaimaa El Fadul gives a chilling and yet deeply human and personal performance. Every actor does an excellent job of making the film feel natural, and they all have a very real, balanced chemistry.
The story might feel slow to some viewers who enjoy the thrill of jump scares and planned shocks. This film opts for unease and suggestion. The supernatural elements feel less like external threats and more like manifestations of unresolved emotion; grief given form and weight. A lot of the tension comes from the use of sound.
Sound design plays a crucial role in shaping the film’s atmosphere. The tinnitus hum is not merely a plot device but an ever-present psychological pressure, sometimes receding into the background, sometimes overwhelming the soundscape entirely. The effect of silence is claustrophobic, trapping the viewer within the same mental labyrinth as the protagonist. There's classic horror trope sounds like creaking doors, light piano keys, violins and uneasy high-pitched tones. Visually, Baab leans into a dark, dreamlike aesthetic. There are some beautiful colours used throughout in costumes and locations such as yellow dresses whilst walking alone in the dark. This beautiful imagery helps the lead stand out, whilst not taking away from the danger she might be in.
At its core, Baab is also a film about identity. The loss of a twin is portrayed not simply as bereavement, but as a partial erasure of self. This theme quietly underpins the film’s most unsettling moments, as the protagonist struggles to locate where her sister ends and she begins. The distortion of reality reflects this internal confusion, reinforcing the idea that grief is not just about missing someone, but about renegotiating one’s place in the world without them.
Baab may not offer comfort, but it offers recognition. In charting grief as an ongoing, shape-shifting presence rather than a problem to be solved. This film is a haunting meditation on loss that feels both deeply personal and universal. A must watch for fans of thriller films, films with strong female leads, and foreign cinema.
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