Shelley

A house with no electricity deep in the Danish woods, oil lamps, long silences — that is how Shelley (2016) opens, the slow-burn horror by Ali Abbasi you can watch online on iFILM. Louise and Kasper live far from anyone and long for a child Louise's body cannot carry.

Their housekeeper Elena, who came from Romania to earn money for her own son, offers a way out: she will carry the baby for a fee large enough to change her life. The pregnancy does not go as promised. Elena's sleep curdles into nightmares, her body weakens, and the sense grows that what is taking shape inside her is not the child anyone bargained for. Cosmina Stratan plays Elena at the edge of her nerves, Ellen Dorrit Petersen plays Louise blinded by want, and Björn Andrésen — the boy from Death in Venice — turns up in a small part.

This is Abbasi's feature debut, years before Border, Holy Spider and The Apprentice. His signature is already here: no jump scares, just a creeping bodily dread that gets under the skin. Made for anyone who likes their horror quiet, patient and draining, in the lineage of Rosemary's Baby. Stream Shelley (2016) online on iFILM.