While it may not have opened the doors for commercial cinema (that distinction goes to 2013’s Siyaah directed by Azfar Jafri which historically had cut the ribbon on today’s cinema at 80 minutes), Zibahkhana is a hoot.
Siyaah, meanwhile, was more commercial fare, made by a sensible mindset. Written by producer Imran Kazmi, Osman Khalid Butt (who was one of the actors in Zibahkhana) and Azfar Jafri, Siyaah worked around the more formulaic norms of horror genre. In the story, a childless couple (Hareem Farooq and Jabbar Naeem) adopt an orphan girl who is possessed by a demon.
Reviewing the movie for Icon, I felt Siyaah was a fairly decent film let down by a double climax that tried to be too intelligent for its own good. I figured, as optimists often do, that better films were on the horizon.
Perhaps I should have watched Adam Khor back then.
Between 2013 and today, with Siyaah, Maya, Hotal, Aksbandh and Pari, horror is the third most-produced genre in Pakistan after romantic dramedies and action; every title (with exception to Siyaah) is hair-raising — but solely in an appalling way.
The horror genre is, unsurprisingly, seen as a quick and dirty way to make a mark in the industry. Unlike Siyaah or Zibahkhana, both made with the same intentions, the rest are half-wit exercises in bad characterisations, worse acting and even worse camerawork and lighting. Not one from this set of filmmakers has an idea on how to develop a story, let alone structure it as a film.
Maya (directed by Jawad Bashir) and Aksbandh (director: Emran Hussain), in particular, had the same premise — a group of youngsters vacationing on a getaway house away from civilisation when a demonic entity fancies on playing peek-a-boo with them.
The strange low-IQ appeal of the premise seems to be alluring to young filmmakers because it wiggled its way on to director Rafay Rashdi’s Thora Jee Lay, a drama film about misguided youth, drugs and intervention that had no need for it at all. In this movie too, a group of youngsters, again, travel to a faraway farm house that is haunted by a witch. Common sense was a late bloomer in this case, because the witch disappears from the plot after three or four spooky scenes.
Of note is that all of these films bank on the concept of demonic possession and not science fiction. For some confounding reason, today foreign literary or pop-culture aspirations are tenaciously shied away from. The practice is a hard contrast from yesteryear filmmakers who actually showed propensity and panache to localise concepts that may seem far-fetched or alien to local religious beliefs.
Zinda Laash, in particular, reminds me of The Night of the Living Dead in its dexterity to execute a well-made production on meagre resources — which, in all intents, is what filmmakers are doing today, without much (if any) success.
Interestingly, after binge-watching the above-mentioned titles, one also discovers another crucial fact: not one of the films, either from the past, or the present, are actually horror films. Yes, they do fall into the genre, but their primary interest appears to be lost in translation, in a large part due to amateurish filmmaking choices.
In a stark contrast, Hollywood films such as The Nun, Conjuring and Annabelle have been ramping up their numbers at the box office, denoting an already established market for well-made and well-written genre films.
A few years back, Korean cinema cashed in on the genre after Japan, gaining international notoriety with slickly made horror titles. Korea as a country is a clash of cultures and religion, yet titles such as The Priests (2015), about two priests who exorcise a possessed child, bank on the audience’s familiarity with Hollywood to deliver a low-key, high-concept spectacle.
The Wailing, another example, takes an overtly intellectual stance that requires immediate research to make sense of what one has seen; surprisingly, the post-process makes the film all the more appealing.
The genre, by default, is inexpensive; its one and only prerequisite is to draft a shrewd — if not intelligent — piece of fiction that goes ‘Boo!’ at the right time. For some reason, however, that formula still continues to elude Pakistani cinema. And instead of a diversity of film genres, all we get is military-style action and romantic comedies.
Published in Dawn, ICON, November 25th, 2018