The characters are where this movie stumbles quite a bit, unfortunately. Most of the story is focused on Amélie but it shifts between the three main characters so often that she winds up feeling very diluted and no one feels very fleshed out (particularly Morjana). It can be hard to strike a balance between total mystery and overly-expository but this movie leans toward mystery to its detriment. Character history is hinted at but unimportant. What killed Morjana and Abdel's parents? Why are Amelie and Antoine's parents used as a punchline? I was once a rebellious and troublesome teenage girl so I was primed to connect with these characters, but either there's nothing there or my stinky American brain just can't make sense of what's provided. The story
France has a pretty fucking bad Islamophobia problem if you weren't aware, and as far as I know the filmmakers are neither Muslim nor people of color, so it's difficult not to look askance at their choice to make a movie so deeply wedded to colonialism and Islam. Where this movie had the most potential was its class and racial commentary. The most obvious read is that a white woman gets assaulted and multiple men of color pay for it with their lives (All but one of the men who die in this movie are non-white), but there's an interesting rub to it: Kandisha is explicitly described as not just a random killer, but an anti-colonial* historical figure who killed Portuguese soldiers in Morocco. Despite the legend claiming she’s taking revenge for the murder of her husband, she’s also described as assisting and avenging women in need.So they took what was an objectively cool legend- a Moroccan woman who lost her husband and/or family to foreign invaders and seduced these soldiers so they could be killed- and decided she should be a killer ghost. Not just a killer ghost, either, but an indiscriminately bloodthirsty ghost who will kill children and people who are only tangentially linked to the summoner. Even though she should be regarded as a heroic figure her legacy has been twisted into that of an evil spirit who can only be stopped by the death of nine men or the woman who summoned her. This version of her- combination anti-colonial warrior, helper of abused women, and bloodthirsty killer- is certainly an...interesting take.