Fantasia 2025 Review: BURNING, A Rashoman-Style Horror Thriller Calls Out For Social Change

An explosion tears through the silence of an otherwise quiet Kyrgyzstan town. What happened to the couple that lived there? Asel and her husband, Marat. And didn’t his mother, Farida, just arrive in town to help around the house? 

 

A burning house leads to burning questions from the rest of the town’s residents as they gather at the local corner store to trade theories and stories. One says it was the fault of the mother-in-law, who was into black magic. Another says it was Asel, never the same after tragedy changed their lives. Someone else says it was Marat, who had simply enough of life. 

 

However it happened, they all agree on one thing, the spark that lit this fire happened long before this fateful night.

 

Radik Eshimov’s horror thriller, Burning, is a film from the country of Kyrgyzstan and an addition to a growing trend in Central Asia of horror films that tackle social issues in the region. Told in the Rashomon style (a single narrative arc told several times from different perspectives), we watch the events unfold from the day Farida arrives and from the days leading up to that night. Each of the town’s residents has their own interpretation of the events that led up to the explosion and fire. The truth will come out in the end. 

 

The horror elements are familiar, serving as comfort food for horror hounds who just need to see something, anything. But, for Eshimov, primarily known as a director of comedies in their homeland, felt that horror should be more than a couple of scares and gross-out moments. Horror is always political, and Burning is no exception, but what they do here with familiar horror tropes is still well done. 

 

Burning is most definitely a social commentary on issues facing the region of Central Asia, similar to another film from the region, the Kazakh supernatural horror film, Dastur. Both films came out in the area last year, and both were massively successful releases. There is a market for horror cinema in the area. Themes of domestic violence and gender bias were addressed in both, with the same sobering results. Eshimov understood the assignment; they understood that the horror genre is always political.

 

All three of the main actors had the range needed to portray their characters in three different ways. Aysanat Edigeeva, who plays the wife, Asel, is to us the centerpiece of this film. She is asked to undertake any infraction that affects her person and spirit. The script demands that she be the emotional catalyst of this story, and she was required to do more than any other character in this film. Her real-life husband, Ömürbek Izrailov, gets points for being her mostly horrible on-screen husband. The mother-in-law, Farida (Kalicha Seydalieva, one of Kyrgyzstan’s most decorated actors), is a pitch-perfect antagonist at first, then a buoy for which we cling for hope. But in that first story, we wouldn't last three seconds if she were our mother-in-law, either.  

 

What started with tragedy ends with hope. Someone has to decide when the stories will end and when the truth will be told instead. The more people speak the truth, the more issues like those Eshimov addresses in their horror debut can be changed for the good of everyone. 

 

Horror in Central Asia is in a very exciting place right now. Filmmakers like Eshimov are picking up their tools of the trade and speaking out against injustices in their society, using the genre that is best known for speaking the loudest. A filmmaker first, they took on the challenging narrative structure first set out by the master, Akira Kurosawa, entrusting their writers, Aizada Amangeldy and Dastan Madalbekov, to help them stick the landing. Then, as a student of horror, they did very well with the horror elements, using tropes and conventions to give a satisfying amount of thrill and chill to this story. 

 

This is a filmmaker and a region that we will continue to keep our eye on.