The movie opens with a guy who crashes his car in the woods and then gets beat to death with a shovel. Then we get to another location where a creepy, disturbed old dude in a bloody shirt looks straight into the camera and says “you’re on the road to hell, my children” (in urdu) and ends it with an evil laugh. Yikes..
Then we get introduced to some teenagers who prepare for a road trip out in the countryside of Pakistan, something their parents are not so happy with. At the same time, the government puts out a warning regarding the water, as it could be infected with some virus that turns people into zombies. After a while on the road, and smoking dope, the kids stop at Deewanas Tea Shop, a real stinky shithole of a place, run by the creepy old dude we saw in the beginning. He drools while mumbling about a place called Hells Ground, while the kids buy some potatoes and moves on. Then the phone signal disappears and the van that had a full tank is suddenly empty, and after getting lost in the woods, they find themselves surrounded by a horde of zombies. If all this was not bad enough, a serial killer wearing a burqa and a big spiked ball is on the loose. Welcome to Hell’s Ground..
Hells Ground (aka Zibahkhana) is known as Pakistan’s first slasher-flick. The film is as much a Texas Chainsaw Massacre-worship as it is a tribute to 70’s horror. The film also works as a kind of a big rebellious middle-finger to Pakistan’s strict authority and religion, so yeah, the film has some huge balls, as huge as the film’s slasher villain uses as the murder weapon.
Otherwise, there’s not much new under the sun here. It’s a straight-forward slasher-flick mixed with some zombies and the same old character tropes we have seen a thousand times. Visually, the film looks great, it’s well directed and has that raw, unpolished 70s-look. The use of dirty, disgusting locations and intense colorful lighting with the environment of Pakistan’s countryside, gives it an eerie and unique atmosphere.
And the scenes with Burqaface alone makes the movie worth a watch.
Director: Omar Kahn
Country & year: Pakistan / UK, 2007
Actors: Kunwar Ali Roshan, Rooshanie Ejaz, Rubya Chaudhry Haider Raza, Osman Khalid Butt, Rehan, Najma Malik
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0887973/
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