The Funeral [Cenaze] (2023) Review

Cemal (Ahmet Rifat Sungar) is a hearse driver given an envelope of cash to carry out at special request with no questions asked. His mission is to take a month getting “lost” while ultimately transporting the body of Zeynep (Cansu Türedi) to the home of her parents. Stopping for the night to rest, he hears noises coming from the back of the vehicle and discovers that Zeynep does not appear to be at rest, despite the fact that she has no pulse.

Smitten by his passenger and discovering that she needs blood to sustain herself, Cemal initially allows Zeynep to feed on him but when that proposition becomes untenable he needs to source a fresh supply. With the two of them on the run and questions to be answered about Zeynep’s past, what does the future hold?

Whether or not you fully commit to Orcun Behram’s twisted take on the road movie depends on how much you buy into the concept of the dour Cemal being transformed by an ungroovy kind of love, especially when the subject of that love is an undead lass with a head would and a penchant for biting chunks out of people. Does Zeynep have a spell over Cemal which casts him as her slave, or has he found something for whom he’ll commit murder? It’s never made clear.

As the wordless object of our antihero’s affection, Türedi is impressive, essaying both sympathy and chills in the viewer as she squeals, growls and claws her way through a Turkish travelogue which takes in both the beauty of the countryside and the scuzz of the suburbs, both equally fitting as killing grounds. Nightmarish detours into Zeynep’s backstory add a cult-based subplot into the mix and a final destination for the mismatched pair, but there’s a leisurely dose of character development and an unhurried pace for the bulk of the journey.

There are sweet interludes between vamp and vamp enabler, but for every weirdly warm moment there’s jarring, cold blooded murder and shots of body parts being packed into storage boxes, just in case Zeynep fancies a snack from the hearse’s fridge. As the plot rolls on, Cemal’s own past is brought into focus as he makes a long overdue stop at his sister’s with Zeynep in tow. This is where a predictable movie would derail the killing train with a by the book confrontation means but The Funeral spins off in a different direction.

For the first three quarters of the movie, Behram is content with having the audience along for the ride, ignoring any cries of “Are we there yet?” as the two leads go about their glum business, their flight seemingly unhindered by a police force which is reported to be searching for a serial killer but isn’t exactly rushing to discover who’s behind the steadily increasing body count. This is not a movie which is ever going to switch to an investigator who has to catch the culprit, damn it. The rest of the Cemal’s admittedly unexciting, unambitious world has fallen away and the film effectively portrays the intoxicating bubble of his revitalised existence.

It’s a little surprising, given the brooding atmosphere and low key build up, that the climax flips into gory punch-up mode as Zeynep confronts the folks that put her in the back of Cemal’s van in the first place, those quiet scenes of introspection giving way to bitten throats, immolations and axe violence. More surprising still, it doesn’t feel grafted on as a means of rewarding the audience for hanging around. So much of this treats the overarching framework merely as a means to travel where the hell it likes, which will wind up as many viewers as it entices.

A downbeat, washed out, grunge streaked excursion into the lives of two loners who find accidental solace in each other, The Funeral swerves much in the way of explanation and the messy (both figuratively and literally) ending leaves more questions than answers but it’s an often striking and unusual take on the vampire mythos.

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The Funeral Exerpt