In Flames

“Some scars never heal”, 25-year-old medical student Mariam (Ramesha Nawal) remarks casually early in the film. “You just learn to live with them.” It powerfully encapsulates the survival essence of In Flames, the debut feature film of Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Zarrar Khan. Set against the contemporary backdrop of Karachi, Pakistan, this slow-burn psychological horror searingly portrays the everyday horror of living in a patriarchal society that continually compromises the agency, safety and dignity of women. Transcending a simplistic portrayal of women as defenceless victims, the film instead champions the strength and solidarity they cultivate to resist the evils in their lives – albeit compelled by circumstance.

When the lives of Mariam, her widowed schoolteacher mother, Fariha (Bakhtawar Mazhar) and her unusually reserved younger brother, Bilal (Jibran Khan), are upended by the unexpected death of her grandfather, they are thrust into legal and financial turmoil. As tension mounts within the confines of their already cramped apartment, the men in their orbit tighten their grip. Among them is their estranged Uncle Nasir (Adnan Shah Tipu) who reappears conveniently offering help, alerting Mariam’s suspicions. Perhaps more subtle is the charming but persistent Asad (Omar Javaid), who Mariam cautiously entertains a secret romance with. But when tragedy strikes on their way home from a beach tryst, Mariam is overwhelmed by a torrent of guilt, despair and buried trauma.

Khan’s script leans into the supernatural to capture Mariam’s deteriorating psyche amidst dangers both tangible and otherworldly. Between the return of her childhood asthma attacks and spectral hallucinations, her mother’s intuition hints at a shared battle with similar demons. Mother and daughter are pulled apart and drawn together by the white-eyed ghouls of the men of their past, where their violence becomes a suffocating threat that continues to haunt beyond the grave. As they traverse liminal spaces between reality and unreality, memories act as both solace and torment, serving as portals that merge past and present trauma.

Aigul Nurbulatova’s expert cinematography is unsettling. Her tight camera lingers long enough so that we witness the violence not just on the characters’ expressions but more viscerally through their eyes, effectively rejecting a voyeuristic engagement with violence typically found in traditional horror cinema. This technique also allows for Nawal’s powerhouse performance of a young woman teetering on the edge of sanity through expression alone to be the film’s biggest strength.

Where the title may very well be a gesture towards a cathartic house fire scene at the end, symbolising a patriarchy in flames, the film’s commentary on women’s subjugation grounds its hope in the transformative power of their resistance.

Ruweyda Sheik Ali

In Flames is released in select cinemas on 24^th May 2024.

Watch the trailer for In Flames here: