ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror Fuel, The Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.
Social commentary horror outing Burning (Kyrgyzstan, 2024) from director Radik Eshimov captured Fantasia 2024’s Best Asian Feature: Gold award. The home of young couple Asel (Aysanat Edigeeva) and her husband Marat (Ömürbek Izrailov) burns down in the opening scenes with mother-in-law Farida (Kalicha Seydalieva) there as a guest, and the film examines different versions of what might have happened as neighbors inside a convenience store share their theories.
The possibility of Asel being possessed by a djinn runs throughout all three suppositions. One person believes Farida used black magic as revenge for Asel being responsible for the accidental death of the couple’s young son, another posits that Asel went mad, and a third believes that dark forces far more human than a supernatural entity were responsible.
All three leads are absolutely amazing in their roles, as each actor gets a turn playing ranges from sympathetic to strong gear-fare archetypes. The supporting cast members also turn in fine work.
Eshimov, working from a superb screenplay by Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov, crafts a harrowing work that examines domestic abuse in the framework of a horror story.
Burning can only be seen exclusively on IndiePix Unlimited on Amazon Prime Video from September 4, 2026.
