Adilkhan Yerzhanov is a prolific genre filmmaker in Kazakhstan, with almost 20 feature films to his name on IMDb. In fact, his 19th film, Kazakh Scary Tales, had its world premiere at the 2025 Fantasia Film Festival. Originally conceived as a 10-episode series, the folk horror “film” is the first three episodes edited together—which create a contained narrative—to tell the story of one cop’s new life in the strange town of Karatas, where terrifying things just keep happening.
Cop Birzhan (Kuantai Abdimadi) has been transferred to a remote mountain village, and no one is happy about it. His wife is miserable, his colleagues don’t like him, and to top it all off, Birzhan seems to have stumbled into something strange happening at the local maternity hospital. As he digs deeper into a series of mysterious deaths, he discovers a much more terrifying truth.
Along the way, he recruits the help of local witch Sara (Anna Starchenko), who helps him figure out what exactly is lurking on the outskirts of town. Starchenko, clad in almost laughable witchy makeup complete with black lipstick and smudged eyeliner, delivers a stellar physical performance as a bridge between the real world and the spirit world. She’s the modern-day medium who can guide the book-smart cop through a world he’s never seen before.
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While these characters feel similar to tropes in Western police procedurals, Kazakh Scary Tales is putting a Kazakh folk horror twist on it, which is refreshing in an era full of folk horror riffs based on British expectations of cults and ancient deities. Abdimadi especially shines as Birzhan, the intelligent yet sarcastic detective desperately trying to figure out how to fit in with his new (corrupt) co-workers. He’s both charming and silly in equal measure, a delightful nerd who must confront the unknown.
Overall, the narrative for the film/storyline is creepy and unnerving, but jumps around too quickly to feel quite cohesive enough. Scenes and certain character relationships seem to appear out of nowhere, as if too many things were left on the cutting room floor. The pace is just too fast, barely giving the audience time to acclimate and understand the world before diving into storylines that seem superfluous.
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While the story jumps around, each episode further establishes the film’s dark yet essential sense of humor, especially as Birzhan’s relationship with the local medical examiner blossoms into a goofy bromance. Part of that humor also derives from gorgeous wide shots of the desolate Kazakh landscape as an old car with a giant chair tied to the top trundles along a dirt road. It’s a landscape so empty and gray that it’s easy to pierce it with a ridiculous yet simple image like a car trying to transport furniture. The camera captures a deep feeling of isolation and claustrophobia amongst the wide, empty spaces that surround the small town.
Since this is technically the first three episodes of a series, Kazakh Scary Tales ends on a delicious cliffhanger that has me wanting more. Yerzhanov melds the police procedural with Kazakh folk horror to make something that feels both familiar and terrifying. It’s another testament to the strength of genre filmmaking coming from Kazakhstan and proves yet again that Yerzhanov is a name to watch when it comes to unique takes on horror and thriller tropes.
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