By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Zarrar Khan’s In Flames is a slow-burning tense watch, which sadly suffers from some pacing issues which hold the movie back from reaching even greater heights.
Still, in spite of this, there is a lot to enjoy in Khan’s vision. All the acting is of a good standard. As a director, Khan has a strong ability to create a tense and nervous atmosphere with his visuals and possesses a knack for understanding what can truly get under an audience’s skin, a quality that the best horror, whether it be in film or a different medium, must have to be effective.
In Flames tells the story of a Pakistani family whose world has been completely shattered by the death of the protagonist Mariam’s beloved grandad. The sad passing leaves Mariam ( Ramesha Nawal),her mother Fariah (Bakhtawar Mazhar), and her younger brother Bilal (Jibran Khan) in a uncertain and financially precarious situation for Mariam’s uncle Nasir (Adnan Shah), a man with an ethical compass somewhere between Don King’s and Jeremy Kyle’s, to exploit.
The horror of In Flames is very much psychologically based, there isn’t a scary monster and/or a malevolent serial killer with a list of petty grievances longer than one of Kevin Durant’s arms for the audience to be afraid of. Instead what Khan wants us to fear and understand is the nature of grief and being completely alone within a societal structure where you wield little or absolutely no power whatsoever.
Cinematographer Aigul Nurbulatova, uses a scheme of bright colours contrasted with hints of shadow to create a sense of fear within the audience. Khan and Nurbulatova have managed to perform a tricky balancing act with the movie’s visuals, in the sense that they’ve created an arresting look that doesn’t undermine the tone and atmosphere that Khan is trying to create.
The decision to shoot the movie on location by Khan and Nurbulatova was a wise one to make. The crowded and narrow apartment block which the family live in and the cramped environments of the various libraries, hospitals, and interior areas which Mariam visits in her daily life emphasise her lack of say in her situation.
Whilst the acting from Ramesha Nawal and Bakhtawar Mazhar is excellent and the visuals are strong In Flames is a movie that really stumbles when it comes to its pacing. Conversations between characters are constantly recycled and as a result large sections of the dialogue begin to resemble a broken record. As the writer Khan manages to give the audience a good five minutes of set up at the beginning of the movie, but then spends a good chunk of the first act meandering along- a decision that isn’t deal-breakingly bad but might put some viewers off.
To conclude, In Flames is an original and ambitious piece of horror which mostly lands despite the few key issues discussed previously. And even with those issues in mind what works about this movie far outweighs what doesn’t.
Bloody Flicks 