Utterly depressing. This film centers on a family threatened while living in Tehran during the peak of the Iran-Iraq war. To make matters worse, the mother has been denied the ability to continue her medical studies. I guess the university of...(never mentioned), didn't care for her political activism. It's never mentioned just who or what she protested or whether her denial to study is because she's a woman. What is to be taken from this is that she is being oppressed. Ultimately, she and her daughter would have been haunted whether she was actively attending medical school or not. I guess being haunted by a djinn is explained as being brought on by stress. Seems the bombing of the city you live in and social and political oppression would bring plenty of that so...point taken.

I've got a lot of patience and watch a good amount of older films, most of which would be consider slow moving. But "Under the Shadow" is at times, excruciatingly slow. I also watch a lot of Horror and what this movie does do well is put its main characters in a very tenuous situation. The war itself is far more threatening than the djinn. The daughter's doll is something that the djinn took that needs to be recovered before they can flee the city and the war. The lost doll is causing the little girl to run a high fever, courtesy of the djinn having it in their possession. The problem is that far too much time is spent looking for the lost doll. It made the movie painfully slow.

The djinn are a threat only because they are the cause of the daughter's illness. The threat they presented was nothing like the one brought about by the war outside. The story centers on the wrong threat. The djinn felt more like that bratty neighborhood bully that won't give you your stuff back.

Finally, "Under the Shadow" relies way too much on jump scares. The haunting of the characters by the djinn seemed to dissipate almost immediately after the mother and daughter lose sight of them. Then they casually climb back into the same bed that they were just pulled from. I avoided the dub and watched the movie in its original language with English subtitles.