SHELLEY

Elena leaves Romania to become a housekeeper for a young couple living in the Danish countryside. Isolated in their beautiful house with no modern comforts and far from home and her son, she becomes close to her employer, Louise, who is sterile. Feeling sorry for her plight and short of money, she agrees to be a surrogate mother. However, once pregnant, something unspeakably evil begins sapping Elena’s strength, who wastes away before our eyes. For his feature debut, Ali Abbasi provides a variation on the “supernatural pregnancy” theme. More dreamlike, disturbing and restrained than its predecessors, including Rosemary’s Baby, which inevitably springs to mind, Shelley is above all an atmospheric movie where nightmares spread like gangrene into seemingly peaceful surroundings.