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"Hell is not a place you go to. You carry Hell with you at all times. You carry it inside you."
Baba
Baskın (Turkish for "raid") is a 2015 Horror Film by Turkish director Can Evrenol. It follows a group of five cops who, after roughing up a waiter in a rural diner, get a call about some unspecified crime in the town of Inceagac. The cops end up crashing their van and finding an old, abandoned police station with another cop car parked just outside. Inside this station, they discover it overrun by a vicious, bloodthirsty cult.


Baskin contains examples of:

  • Animal Motifs: Frogs seem to appear wherever Baba is present. This could be reference to the Book of Revelation, where the False Prophet spews evil spirits from his mouth that resemble frogs.
  • Asshole Victim: Yavuz. Out of the four cops, he's the worst. Cruel and Unusual Death aside, nobody would be mourning him.
  • Ax-Crazy: The cultists, who act more like a pack of rabid dogs than they do human beings.
  • Bald of Evil: Baba.
  • Bestiality Is Depraved: The cops joke about having sex with chickens and elephants.
  • Black-and-Grey Morality: On one hand, there's the cops, who are beyond unlikeable, but on the other, there's the cult, who ... well, just look at the tropes associated with them.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Baba's philosophy is a strange, near-incomprehensible one.
    Baba: The human soul is corrupt, it only worships power. It keeps looking for new things to worship, because it has boundaries, drawn by its masters.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: More like Brainwashed and Ax-Crazy.
  • Brutish Character, Brutish Weapon: One cultist hits Apo in the head with a sledgehammer.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: The conversations in the diner, and just about everything that Yavuz says.
    Yavuz: Come out, you bastard! You bust our balls, we'll rip your balls off! We'll fuck you, motherfucking son of a bitch!
  • Cult: Baba and his followers.
  • Dark Messiah: According to writer/directer Can Evrenol and actor Mehmet Cerrahoglu, Baba is this to his cult. The cultists themselves are outcasts that Baba has welcomed into his fold, and they show a sort of affection for him, even appearing to cry when he's killed.
  • Depraved Dwarf: Baba can't be much taller than 5 feet, and is a murderous cult leader to boot.
  • Expy: Mehmet Cerrahoglu was told to watch Hellraiser and Apocalypse Now while taking inspiration for his role as Baba. He displays the Blue-and-Orange Morality of Pinhead and acts the part of a leader of a savage cult like Colonel Kurtz, the latter of whom he even emulates by splashing water on his bald head. He's also supposed to be based on (or maybe a representation of?) Ahriman.
  • "Everybody Dies" Ending: All of the policemen, plus Baba, are killed at the end, and just when it looks like he's about to get away as the sole survivor, Arda is hit by the police van.
  • Eye Scream: Happens to Yavuz, courtesy of Baba.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Baba has a calm, restrained demeanor, all while he's mutilating the cops. When he forces Yavuz to have sex with a woman wearing only a straw skirt and a goat skull, he cheers him on like a father encouraging a child.
  • Femme Fatalons: Baba's fingernails are long and sharp enough to disembowel Apo.
  • Fan Disservice: The cultists are all in various stages of nudity, and writhing in what looks like a perpetual orgy. A bloody, gore-soaked orgy. Then, of course, there's the woman in the cage.
  • Foreshadowing: Early on, Yavuz is telling his fellow cops about how he had sex with a transsexual prostitute in a dark room, without any visuals. Later in the movie, after Baba stabs him in the eyes, he is forced to breed with a woman wearing only a skirt of straw and a goat skull.
  • Gainax Ending: Arda kills Baba and escapes, runs out into the middle of the street, and is hit by the cops' van, which seems to suggest that he's stuck in some sort of "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Gender Reveal: An offscreen example. Yavuz is telling a story about how he picked up a hooker, and then took her to a dark room where they undressed and "she" turned out to have a penis. Not that that stopped him.
  • Gorn: It'd be easier to list scenes that aren't particularly gory.
  • Gory Discretion Shot:
    • All we see of what happens to Seyfi and the sole surviving cop in the station is them being chased by a horde of blood-soaked cultists. Doubles as Nothing Is Scarier.
    • Baba having his head smashed by Arda.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The cultists appear to be this, due to their habit of butchering human meat, and eating Apo's intestines.
  • Jerkass: Yavuz, big time. He's a crass, rude, violent man who will find any excuse he can to abuse his power as a cop, up to and including beating up a teenage boy for accidentally insinuating that he believes him to be gay.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Remzi, whom despite his involvement in the cops' crude discussions and giving Yavuz the okay to assault the waiter, has cared for Arda since his youth and acts like a father figure to him.
  • Large and in Charge: Not exactly "in charge," per se, but the Master Creep is tall and seems to act as The Dragon to Baba.
  • Laughing Mad: Arda, after escaping.
  • Messianic Archetype: Arda takes on this role, being the sole good cop, and by killing Baba, he has freed himself and his friends from a horrific cycle.
  • Mind Screw: Good luck trying to figure out just what the hell is going on without doing some digging.
  • Mistaken for Gay: At least, that's the excuse Yavuz used to beat up the waiter.
  • No Kill like Overkill: After jamming the key in Baba's head, Arda takes a stone bench and proceeds to smash his head to bits.
  • Only Sane Man: Seyfi is the only one who doesn't participate in his partners' inane conversations, and in fact, is annoyed by them. Though he shares this role with Arda, who ends up being the real hero of the movie and a messianic figure of sorts.
  • Pet the Dog: When he's making his entrance, Baba gently brushes a hand against his cultists.
  • Politically Incorrect Hero: While he pushes the "hero" envelope, Yavuz is rather displeased when he thinks the waiter believes him to be gay.
  • Red Right Hand: Baba, again. He has a babyface (which, in Real Life, is caused by a very rare skin condition that his actor, Mehmet Cerrahoglu, suffers from), which makes him stand out more than a little.
  • Religion of Evil: Confusing as Baba's sermons and motives are, it's pretty obvious that neither he nor his cult are a benevolent lot.
  • Satanic Archetype: Or "Arhimanic Archetype". Baba is analogous to the Big Bad of Zoroastrian belief, who is a sort of prototype of the Christian depiction of Satan.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: Let's see, the cops crash the van, end up in some hellish alternate reality, one survives and kills the bad guy, and escapes only to get run over by the same van.
  • Slashed Throat: How Remzi, the police chief, dies.
  • Surreal Horror
  • Token Good Teammate: Not explicitly, but Arda is the only one of the cops besides Seyfi who comes off as less of a hedonistic or violent asshole than his friends. Plus he kills Baba in the end.
  • Torture Porn: The last few minutes of the movie sees the cops all bound and subjected to various tortures.
  • Viewers Are Geniuses: Mind Screw as it may be, Baskin is actually an allegory for Zoroastrianism, and a lot of the weirder, seemingly irrelevant scenes, make reference to Turkish superstition.
  • Word-Salad Horror: Baba's philosophical diatribes, such as the page quote, make absolutely no sense and just add to his and the movie's sheer weirdness.

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