It was just a mere coincidence that I came to know about ZibahKhana. I call it coincidence because I never thought I could find anything like this in Pakistani film industry. Technically that was not a coincidence !!! 🙂
While surfing through the net my brother came to know about this movie ( OMG !! Thats a movie !! What a freaky name that is !! … I had the same expression when I heard of it, so don’t worry that you thought like this, its something natural … I guess ). Then both of us went through a couple of snapshots from the movie, the one I remember was that of a zombie. To be honest it was a bit hard for me to believe that this movie was actually made in Pakistan by Pakistanis. My first impression of the film led me to the thought that it might have been produced by a Pakistani but cinematography and all other tasks would have been dealt with outside Pakistan … Strange thoughts, but, I never had a chance to see anything beyond the traditional “Mirch Masala” stuff for Pakistani film industry, that is why I was reluctant to accept it.
In just a few moments I found some working links for the movie and spent my next hour and a half watching this blood violence.
ZibahKhana is an Urdu-English film directed by Omar Khan & produced by Pete Tombs. The film is the first of its kind in Pakistan’s entertainment industry having a horror genre. Though there are so many movies that contain blood violence but this one is unique to its own kind. It was released in 2007 and originally premiered at the Nat Film festival in Denmark and has since been screened at festivals all over the world. This movie was shot in Islamabad and its surrounding areas in just a short time span of 30 days !
The main actors are;
- Kunwar Ali Roshan as Vicky
- Rooshanie Ejaz as Ayesha
- Rubya Chaudhry as Roxy
- Haider Raza as Simon
- Osman Khalid Butt as OJ
- & Others.
The film’s story revolves around five college friends who secretly plan to watch a concert. On the way to their destination they meet a series of unfortunate events and those events are what the film is all about. They ran into a small crowd of people turned into Zombies presumably because of drinking some contaminated water, against which there are protests being made in the Capital.OJ gets bitten by one of them and its not difficult for the ones who have played or heard about the most famous survival horror game series “Resident Evil”, to guess what is expected next !
Later they fall victim to a mysterious psychopath character who is constantly wearing a “Burqa”, more like a killer on the loose. Vicky, Roxy & Simon gets slaughtered by him one after another and the killer himself gets killed by Ayesha in the end.
Criticism
The movie has its inspiration from “Resident Evil” game series (for the zombies) and the mystery characters from Hollywood named “Freddy” & “Jason” (for the Burqa killer).The story somehow fails to correlate the two main themes under focus; the zombies and the killer ! I couldn’t find the connection between them. Moreover, hiding the psycho killer inside a Burqa is something I feel is unjust and an unfair attempt on the sanctity of the veil in religion. This is something the world is already trying to prove that inside every Burqa there is an evil person, who is fond of slaughtering mankind !! This guy should have been hidden behind some mask or anything like that but burqa.
Overall the film is a good attempt to change the taste of viewers & offering them something different for their visual senses. But this much amount of violence (I call it blood violence) & gore should not be shown without prior warning to the viewers.
You can watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TJKfOT0j1Q&feature=related.
If you want to give the full movie a chance this link http://stagevu.com/video/wlrvskyoggpk might help you, but …. watch at your own risk !!
Want to read what the Time magazine says about Zibahkhana visit http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1632168,00.html.
Shades 
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