Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Matchmaker’ on Netflix, a Saudi Horror-Thriller Tackling Toxic Masculinity

Not to be at all confused with sort-of-forgotten 1990s movies starring Janeane Garafolo is The Matchmaker (now on Netflix), an understated and intriguing thriller from Saudi Arabian director Abdulmohsen Aldhabaan. It’s the story of a man who feels powerless and emasculated enough to be lured into what appears to be a feminist-revenge scenario inspired by centuries of male oppression. Sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? I can confirm that’s true, although whether the film’s grand intentions shine through remains in question.  

THE MATCHMAKER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: “Once upon a time,” goes the voiceover, and, having watched the rest of the movie, I can confirm that this storybook/fairy tale opening line establishes a general feeling of… unreality, let’s call it. We see images of an ancient desert city, apparently abandoned, although fires burn inside a series of caves in a majestic rock wall. The story is about a woman who suffered greatly at the hands of a cruel, abusive husband. No one would listen to her pleas for help. “Then an ear in the middle of the desert heard her,” the voiceover continues, and I don’t think it’s a literal ear as much as a metaphorical or allegorical one – this movie seems to be chock-full of metaphor and allegory. Then we see a man running across the sand enveloped in flames. Hessa (Reem Al Habib) holds a flaming torch and wears an expression of ominous contentment. Another man walks into the frame to stand by her side. He is her servant. “She cleansed the sins of her man, and he came back a new person,” the story goes. The man carries an ornate box. The box contains a ring with a red jewel. A goat cocks his head, watching these people stupidly. Are we the goat in this scenario? Quite possibly.

ELSEWHERE. A far more familiar domestic scene: Tarak (Hussam Al Harthi) arrives at his home after work. It’s dark. The house is quiet. He goes upstairs to find his wife and daughter engaged in a staring contest and enjoying themselves, but the enjoyment kinda drains from the room when dad walks in. He worked late – again. They ate dinner without him. Why does he always work late? He’s the IT guy at the office, and, Tarak says, he’s always the last one to leave. Tarak awakes in the middle of the night and the space on the bed between him and his wife might as well be the Grand Canyon. He gets out of bed and goes out to the deck and climbs a ladder and peeks up over the roof ledge and spies on a neighbor couple as they dance joyfully in their room. Tarak looks wistful, melancholy – he’s the Sad Peeper.

The next day, happenstance puts Tarak in the elevator with Salma (Nour Alkhadra), a secretary in the office he works in. Interpret his gaze – and a lot of interpretation has to happen in this movie, which not only implies so much and says so little, but also has something to say about men and their gazes – and he’s taken by her beauty. While he works at his desk, he listens to some Internet Content in which some guy blathers on about the difference between being “a man” and “a male.” The former does what he wants and is adventurous, while the latter is a schmuck – real regressive alpha/beta drivel. He Sad-Peeps around a corner as a male boss-type man talks down to Salma; later, Tarek follows her to a stairwell, where they smoke cigarettes and he warns her that the boss guy is a renowned sexual harasser. “I know,” she says. “Don’t worry about me.”

At the end of the work day, Tarek finds an ornate box – yep, just like in the opening sequence – containing a tablet computer. It plays a video advertising a remote resort way out in the desert where gentlemen like himself can go for more than a little spa getaway. In fact, it promises a discreet vacay where he can get secretly married to a woman who will satisfy the needs of a lonely man like himself. Hmm. And in the very next scene, Tarak is on a plane, embarking on the very adventure that a deeply insecure podcaster would surely, absolutely take.  

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Matchmaker’s slow-burn intrigue, methodical pace and general air of menace renders it a successor of sorts to Jonathan Glazer’s uneasy thrillers Birth and Under the Skin.

Performance Worth Watching: To be a bit reductive, the cast functions ever so slightly as a series of cyphers within an allegory. So the most noteworthy performance here is from Aldhabaan, whose confidence in the material and its visual presentation is evident from the opening scenes.

Memorable Dialogue: Hessa, a.k.a. the Matchmaker, greets Tarak: “Everything about our traditions is authentic. And because you’re authentic, we accepted your application.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: What Tarak finds after the plane lands and he takes a lengthy ride deep into the desert is a hotel staffed by near-zombielike men whose demeanors could be charitably described as “chilly.” The guests are all male. They all attend a wedding that night, and it’s lovely in a weird, culty, sinister-ceremony kind of way, with the bride paraded out on the back of a camel – and then everyone’s ushered back to their rooms so they won’t hear what happens out yonder to the new, happy groom. One man interprets the place as a paradise, telling Tarak that it’s so great, his friends came here and never went home. How about that.

Aldhabaan’s intent with The Matchmaker is to say more with less. Dialogue is sparse, and more information is conveyed with tone, performance and visual detail, with the dramatic score doing a lot of heavy lifting to foster a deleterious tone. So there’s more implication than clarity here, and any attempt to prescribe a hard-and-fast moral stance to the film feels like a futile exercise. What could be a single-note screed targeting toxic masculinity is much more than that: Tarak is a bored, discontent man, a milquetoast type susceptible to both dubious “self-help” philosophies about manhood and honey-trap promises of – well, what, exactly? A greater sense of self and purpose? A reinvigoration of his biological mandates? Better sex? We’re not sure what Tarak wants. He doesn’t seem to know exactly what he wants, either. 

Parts of the film indulge the kind of feminist revenge fantasies that metaphorically represent extreme vestiges of the #MeToo movement; the male-female power dynamic has been tilted toward the former so greatly and for so long, overcorrection was inevitable. So, hey, burn those SOBs alive! Even if it’s not particularly civilized or ethical. But the urge is understandable, more so than whatever urge Tarak follows. Further dissection risks spoiling what happens during The Matchmaker’s puzzling third act, which is rife with striking imagery and a conclusion that’s suggestive bordering on an outright muddle. It strikes me that my lack of deeper cultural context may play a role in such puzzlement, or that a second viewing may reveal corner-of-the-frame subtleties clarifying the film’s thematic purpose. But it’s confidently and artfully directed, and absolutely stirs enough curiosity and fascination to sustain its 81-minute run time. 

Our Call: Any frustration we may feel while attempting to suss out the message within The Matchmaker is ultimately trumped by its ability to arouse our intrigue. STREAM IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.