Prikosnoveniye

Rated as the scariest Russian horror movie ever, Prikosnovenie (which is best translated into English as The Encounter, not Contact) is one of those films viewers don't watch twice -- at least that's what many of them admit online. A low-budget supernatural murder mystery filmed with a bare minimum of homemade special effects succeeds brilliantly in creating a truly inhuman, otherworldly atmosphere you won't want to experience again in a hurry.

A detective investigating a series of suspicious suicides realizes too late he might not be dealing with an organized crime group of hypnotists as he first believed...

The strength of the movie is in the fact that it's not filmed for entertainment, the way most horror flicks are. You're not expected to watch it, stretch and say "it was only a movie". It's filmed in dead (pardon the pun) seriousness, a fictionalized documentary rather than a scary bedtime story. Interestingly, director Albert Mkrtchyan -- who enjoyed the challenge of working on a supernatural story contrary to his superstitious friends' warning -- very nearly shared the main character's fate and never made another film until his death 15 years later.

The film is unique in that it actually makes us experience the other side beyond life, the notorious next world -- not as a filmmaker's concept but as raw unedited truth. How did the director do it? -- Well, that's talent for you. But just getting a glimpse of what might await you out there is enough reason to carry on living.