منطقة محظورة - قصر البارون

Fekry (Mohamed Fekry) returns from America after studying film directing. While in America, he met his friend Yasmine (Yasmine Omar), with whom he began a romantic relationship that continued after their return. Their life together was peaceful, save for Fekry's reluctance to get married. Fekry aspired to make the feature film he had spent three years writing, but producer Abdulrahman (Mohamed Abdulrahman) persuaded him to direct a documentary about the Baron Empain Palace to unravel its mysteries. The script was written by Sarah Youssef Gohar (Sarah Nakhleh), who convinced the producer to hire Fekry because of her connection to his girlfriend Yasmine, who had recently been suffering from nervous stress. Yasmine welcomed participating in the film when she learned it featured dramatic reenactments. She was drawn to the folklore surrounding the palace and its owner—who had practiced occult rituals to treat his sister's epilepsy—as well as rumors about spirits and demons haunting the estate after two young women committed suicide on the premises. When all efforts to secure filming permits inside the palace failed, the director decided to shoot exterior shots and find a similar location for the interiors. Sarah, however, fiercely objected to filming outside and insisted on shooting within the palace walls, particularly the scenes depicting youth once labeled Satanists who were caught practicing devil-worship rituals inside—drawing a hexagram, standing within it dressed in black, and summoning spirits and demons by candlelight, echoing rituals found among certain African and East Asian tribes—along with the scene of the two women's suicides. The film crew was forced to sneak into the palace at night after bribing a security guard. The rituals were performed and filmed; Yasmine grew increasingly distraught, and crew member Tarek disappeared. After fruitless searches for him, Yasmine also went missing and could not be found anywhere on the grounds. In the morning, Yasmine's body was discovered after she fell from the very same balcony from which the two women had leapt to their deaths, and Tarek's body was found at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Suffering a severe nervous breakdown, Sarah was admitted to a hospital for treatment. The investigation team visited her to take her statement after questioning the entire crew, discovering that she was the one who had convinced Yasmine to join the project and had helped supply her with the drug Paroxetine—which Sarah herself was taking during questioning. Forensic tests confirmed that all three victims had ingested the substance, known to induce suicidal impulses with heavy use. At Sarah's home, investigators found photographs of her with the three victims, proving that Sarah was an embodiment of the evil that had plagued the palace since the Baron's era. The Baron's obsession with the occult had driven his sister and daughter to a similar fixation, and Sarah's own fascination with magic made her an instrument of the palace owner's dark desires, ensuring that every victim suffered agonizingly before dying in the palace, just as his daughter and sister had. Sarah used the ritual scripted in her screenplay to draw Yasmine into the circle as a victim—a calculated scheme devoid of an ordinary murder weapon, as Sarah Youssef Gohar herself was the weapon. Sarah was committed to a psychiatric facility pending an evaluation of her mental competency, ahead of her trial on charges of serial murder. (Forbidden Area - Baron Palace)

• CategoriesMysteryHorror