Zone Of Interest by Jonathan Glazer was one of the most disturbing films I have ever watched. That, in fact, means that everyone who was involved in the process of making the movie did a perfect job.

Zone Of Interest is a movie about the Holocaust, but it depicts the event in a different way. Other Holocaust-related movies I had watched depicted the genocide in a more direct way, such as showing scenes where the Jews would be tortured or treated like animals by the Nazi. However, in Zone Of Interest, things go the other way around. The movie tells stories “by staying silent,” and shows by “hiding it.” Through the whole film, there are no scenes that show the persecution of the Jews. All of it is depicted only through small hints and sound.

The scene where only flowers were shown on the screen as the background color started turning red and eventually filled up the whole screen was most memorable to me. Hedwig Höss, the wife of Rudolph Höss, talks about her attachment to a well-kept garden. The camera then cuts to marigolds, sunflowers, roses, and then shows hibiscus flowers. Suddenly, the beauty of the flowers are enveloped by a groaning bass-like sound that sounds like people screaming in pain. The screen then starts turning red, like a bloodbath, when all of a sudden..everything abruptly stops. The hibiscus flowers, now that I think back at it, even looked like the mouths of screaming people.

The black screen at the start and the ending credits were also memorable moments. Though the beginning of the film confused me at first, the disturbing feeling overwhelmed me as the bizarre music that felt more like a cacophony continued. While my brain was taking and analyzing what cruel scene would come after this “noise,” a normal house appeared on the screen, completely catching me off guard. The ending credits scene also caught me off guard, but in a different way. The music for the ending credits sounded completely like a recorded ruckus or cries and wails of the dead, sending chills up the spine more than any other horror movie. However, though haunted by the music, the contrast of the beginning and ending of the movie had a rather cathartic meaning to it. At the beginning, the music sounds as if it were muffled screams, while the ending music features clearer screams. Regarding what the film is about, I thought the contrast in soundtrack may suggest that all the people who suffered and died in Auschwitz-Birkenau finally can speak up about what they had to go through.

Overall, Zone Of Interest was the most haunting film I had watched to this date, showing the true banality of evil by contrasting the Höss family’s life with the wails of Auschwitz prisoners in the background. It was the perfect definition and portrayal of the despicable, unforgivable, and atrocious things that humans could do as a part of their normal, daily life.