Many audiences are probably still wondering what exactly was born at the end of Azrael, so thankfully, the filmmakers behind the movie are here to help clear that up.
Azrael is a post-apocalyptic narrative that follows Samara Weavings' Azrael as she tries to survive being hunted down by a religious cult who have all cut out their vocal cords and worship the wind. The film is fairly unforgiving when it comes to offering information and context, leaving fans to piece all the narrative together to their best understanding.
Azrael Director and Writer Reveal Their Intentions With That Devil Baby
The Direct's Russ Milheim spoke with both Azrael director E.L. Katz and writer Simon Barrett, who helped break down some of what audiences saw at the end of the movie––particularly what exactly that baby was.
After her close friend is killed in front of her by the Burnt People, the scary monsters present throughout the film, Samara Weaving's Azrael takes the fight back to the cultists hunting her down. What follows is plenty of carnage and several close calls.
The big twist, however, is at the end when the pregnant cult leader gives birth to some unknown creature. While she dies, Azrael goes to pick up the baby, who does not look human in the slightest.
Even stranger is when a satisfied smile crosses Azrael's face as she cradles the creature in her arms.
"I think we know who he is," E.L. Katz noted, alluding to it being the Devil himself:
"I think we know who he is. There's a sense [that] he's been in a few books, just a couple... But it was fun to depict him in a little bit of a different way, like in a somewhat cute way. I think that was the thing where I was just like, you know, we keep fucking turning to this guy in different versions, in life, and in history, there must be something that's pulling people towards it. It's like, oh, yeah, isn't he cute? He's kind of adorable. Like, yeah, I guess I take care of this thing."
When asked directly if the baby was Lucifer reincarnated, Barrett admitted that "there's a lot of evidence," suggesting that to be the case while confirming that, at the very least, the baby is an "antithetical resurrection figure:"
"I mean, there's a lot of evidence, you know, seven eyes. I don't want to--To be honest, I don't have an answer to that one. I think we would certainly say that the baby is a kind of antithetical resurrection figure, you know, too, maybe Christ, and so maybe then that would be, like, the direct interpretation of that. But I actually don't know."
The options of it being either the Devil himself or the Antichrist, the writer conceded that "either one of those would be pretty acceptable:"
"I think either one of those would be pretty acceptable... I mean, we just called it the goat baby... We were trying to always humanize our creatures because the mythology is such that, like, the morality shift in the film, and, you know, the goat baby ends up being kind of adorable."
While the entire movie follows a cast of characters, who don't speak, much to the surprise of audiences, one brief appearance is made by another man who does speak and has his vocal cords intact.
"It was important in this world to show that there were cultures outside of the one that we were seeing," Barrett explained, confirming that the language the character spoke an original variant of Esperanto:
"I felt like it was important in this world to show that there were cultures outside of the one that we were seeing. Not everyone in this world is just like this religious sect that we're seeing who've, like, cut their vocal cords and done all these things... And by having him speak Esperanto, or actually, that actor and I came up with a good bit of pigeon Esperanto, because he's actually Danish, and Esperanto has a lot of Spanish-y pronunciations that he didn't like. So he changed his Esperanto, which was perfect for me because I was like, great."
"It's an Esperanto that only exists in this film," he iterated, also pointing out how that makes Azrael one of the "two or three Esperanto language films in existence:"
"Even better, It's an Esperanto that only exists in this film. Esperanto was created a little bit as a universal socialist language. So the notion is, he's from some farming community that's found another way to make things work. That's why we're one of the two or three Esperanto language films in existence now... Giving people enough hints that you can hopefully piece the mythology together but not spelling it out is the experiment of this film."
Bassett then went on to drop a fun little piece of knowledge about how Samara Weaving was actually able to vocalize on set despite her character not doing so at any point in the film:
"[Samara Weaving] was pretty often screaming on set, and then we would take it out in post because we didn't want people faking whisper screams because then you wouldn't see the tension in their necks and faces. There is probably a cut of Azrael where you can hear Samara's famous scream in every scene. We went back in post and had her dub in because her vocal cords have been cut... We did a lot of weird research into how that would sound... She was articulating mostly on set, just so that her performance, like her neck muscles, would be correct."
Azrael is now playing in theaters worldwide.
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