As the title of this post suggests “don’t eat “Luddoos”, SPECIALLY from any “khokha” during a long drive, you must have been surprised that where these Luddoos came from? Actually, its all about Zibahkhana. Yes, finally I made it to FiLUMS festival’s third and last day. They said it will start at SHARP 7:30 PM, but it took a little while to get seated “on stairs” and it started around 8 o’clock. Expectedly, there was a huge crowd, mostly were the students, and I saw a very few outsiders there. First, Shanu Taxi was played on, it was a short film by Vasant, a director from India. Shanu Taxi was about 15-20 minutes’ duration and was based on a random thought about a twist in a taxi driver’s life after receiving a gift of mobile as a reward of his honesty, no doubt it was a thought-provoking piece of celluloid, and after that came Zibahkhana.

Before getting started, the enthusiastic Omer Ali Khan, writer and director of the movie, told about the movie itself, it was a fun-wrapped speech and everybody was quite amused. Zibahkhana was almost around 1-1:30 hour in duration. The story goes around 5 college chicks, who secretly planned for a long drive for some thrill and left their homes telling a different story to their parents, AND it all started happening after they stopped by first “khokha” and had tea and Luddoos and soon after that they had first attack by a Zombie, and afterwards they got lost in the jungle and then the story goes on.

Most interesting part was that all 3-4 major characters were students, who were enjoying the movie with us and whole crowd applauded on every commendable scene, so they were getting direct response, though most of the time the reaction of crowd was fun driven. Technically a sound movie and various small details were addressed, but some scenes had less clarity as to what exactly happened. The cinematography was perfect and the performance was great, new talent was very confident.

Most importantly, the stuff I liked about this local director’s flick was that, that its purely based on Pakistani Culture, there were glimpses of Maula Jutt, dhamal beat as the dominant background music, usage of “shuttlecock burqa” as mask or cover, even Luddoo. Yes, the story was predictable, but original locations and related Pakistani props gave it a reality-based genuine touch. It was fun watching first Pakistani horror movie, no doubt we were laughing most of the times, but there was really some ruthless killing in it, with blood all over the place and eyeballs in a jar (yuk).

Bravo to LMA for organizing such an event and providing us some visual treats. We should look forward to next FiLUMS with new arrivals including ….Gaamaa, Phajja and Pappu :p

P.S.: Pictures are of auditorium before the movies started and of passes.