Under the Shadow

In building a ghost story set in wartorn Tehran, “Under the Shadow” can shift between metaphors and meanings effortlessly, allowing its eighty minutes to feel like a veritable adventure. It isn’t perfect by any stretch—an ungenerous sort could (not wholly inaccurately) sum it up as an Iranian version of “The Babadook”, the audience is clued into where this story is going long before the characters catch up, and the child’s performance leaves something to be desired—but in channeling anxieties of living under the stress of war while raising a child, “Shadow” touches a unique nerve. Messy but satisfying.

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