The Language of Death and the Limits of Translation

Read Time:5 Minute, 42 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
The Things You Kill
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Genre: Drama, Thriller, Mystery
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director(s): Alireza Khatami
Writer(s): Alireza Khatami
Cast: Ekin Koç, Ercan Kesal, Hazar Ergüçlü, Erkan Kolçak Köstendil, Serhat Nalbantoglu, Selen Kurtaran, Aysen Sümercan
Where to Watch: shown at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, the Night Visions Film Festival, and the Hong Kong International Film Festival. It will also screen at festivals in Australia (Sydney and Melbourne), the Czech Republic (Karlovy Vary), and Italy (Festival del Cinema di Roma)

RAVING REVIEW: Alireza Khatami’s THE THINGS YOU KILL seeps in—an atmospheric riddle where vengeance and grief walk the same path until they’re indistinguishable. On its surface, it’s about a man haunted by his mother’s suspicious death and a gardener coerced into revenge. Beneath that, it’s about the futility of trying to purify pain with more violence. Every frame feels like a confession whispered into a well, knowing the echo will return distorted.

Ekin Koç plays Ali, a university professor whose grief has curdled into obsession. His performance carries a fragile precision, the kind that doesn’t rely on big outbursts but on the tremor behind a glance. When he recruits Hamit (Ercan Kesal), a quiet gardener, to help exact a terrible act, their relationship becomes the film’s core—two men united by resentment and divided by conscience. The gardener’s silence becomes a mirror for Ali’s unraveling.

Khatami’s direction turns ordinary spaces into traps. Gardens, mirrors, and terraces recur throughout the film—not as symbols hammered into the story, but as reflections of Ali’s fractured interior world. A cracked mirror, a dying plant, a well that never seems to empty—each detail feels like a deliberate note in a slow, mournful composition. The result is visual poetry, equal parts ethereal and suffocating.

While much has been said about the film’s Lynchian influence, THE THINGS YOU KILL never feels like an imitation. Khatami borrows Lynch’s unease but not his surreal excess. His logic is rooted in emotional realism—hallucinations don’t break the world; they deepen it. He uses ambiguity not to confuse but to reflect the way grief mutates perception. In Ali’s world, the lines between what happened and what’s remembered never align cleanly.

The pacing is deliberate, sometimes punishingly so. Long stretches of quiet conversation and unbroken takes test patience but reward attention. Khatami trusts the audience to sit with discomfort, letting unease replace exposition. The silence between lines often says more than dialogue could. For some, it will feel glacial; for others, hypnotic.

Hazar Ergüçlü’s turn as Ali’s wife, Hazar, adds emotional grounding to the film’s philosophical density. She’s not just collateral in his descent; she’s the one who humanizes the cost of his choices. Their dynamic feels lived-in—tenderness laced with resentment, intimacy interrupted by the ghost of someone neither of them can stop invoking. In one unforgettable rooftop scene, the two share cigarettes under pale morning light. Nothing dramatic happens, but the moment lingers because of what’s unspoken—the weight of knowing love isn’t enough to save someone from their own mind.

The film’s title becomes an obsession in its own right. What are the things we kill? Our illusions? Our parents? Our peace? Khatami uses language itself as a motif. During a lecture, Ali notes that the Arabic root of “translate” can also mean “to kill,” a chilling metaphor for what the film is doing—translating trauma into art, but losing something vital in the process. It’s the film’s most resonant idea: that transformation always requires destruction, and understanding may come only after the damage is done.

Violence feels awkward, inevitable, and ugly. The act that defines the film isn’t cathartic; it’s hollow. Khatami refuses the release most revenge dramas crave. Instead, he builds toward a quiet implosion, where realization hurts more than any visible wound. By the time the film’s final image—a haunting blend of surreal clarity and emotional truth—it doesn’t shock; it devastates.

THE THINGS YOU KILL is less a thriller than a meditation disguised as one. Its structure feels fragmented because grief is fragmented. Its dialogue feels translated because trauma rarely speaks fluently. The blend of Turkish dialogue, Iranian direction, and Polish cinematography creates a cultural dissonance that mirrors the story’s themes: identities layered, languages crossed, emotions mistranslated.

At its core, THE THINGS YOU KILL is about inheritance—of trauma, guilt, language, and violence. It’s about the futility of trying to cleanse blood with water when the stain is internal. Its slow rhythm and elliptical narrative won’t work for everyone, but those willing to surrender to its mood will find a deeply affecting exploration of how grief corrodes truth.

It’s not an easy watch, nor a flawless one, but it’s striking in its confidence. Khatami’s command of tone and texture marks him as one of the most exciting voices in modern world cinema. For a film built on restraint, it leaves a surprisingly large scar—a hypnotic, imperfect, but unforgettable descent into the quiet violence of the human heart.

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[photo courtesy of CINEVERSE ENTERTAINMENT, BAND WITH PICTURES, DESMAR, FULGURANCE, LAVA FILMS, REMORA FILMS, SINEAKTIF, TELL TALL TALE]

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