Babak Anvari’s Wounds | 2019 Sundance Film Festival

Celebrated debut film Under the Shadow set in the war-torn Tehran of the 1980s has a lot of things going for it beyond the horror genre, so now it feels as if Babak Anvari split that atom when he was offered a pair of projects – his sophomore project would be with Annapurna Pictures. We’re not sure what the tone the source material in Nathan Ballingrud’s The Visible Filth is based on, but what we find here with Wounds campy, cartoonish and trigger ready with those fun jump out of your seat type or cringe moments that also acts as a cautionary tale for the addictive nature of smart phone usage. We were at the premiere (which includes a sprinkling of plastic cockroaches littering the floor of the Library) with Armie Hammer and Zazie Beetz shoring up.