“Do you ever feel that you are in a wrong place?” asks Adam, the melancholy protagonist in Moin Hussain’s first movie. ” Like if this is where you were meant to be?” Perhaps Adam could be talking about his life at Sky Peel Green service station where he works night shift at a burger joint, but it goes beyond; it is the full existential monty. Indeed, his troubled dad had believed himself as an alien from some other universe. Since the creepy lights of this station have been shining on him, he has begun to wonder whether he may also be one.
Hussain’s eerie and idiosyncratic British feature maximizes on its location by visualizing a no man’s land at its most liminal (“Enjoy the rest of your journey,” says the main door sign). The film should perhaps best be seen as a black comedy or punk rock Alien Nation unzipped meditation on race and culture in modern Britain through this Pakistani/british emo filter. Its occupants move along like zombies That do not talk to anyone else.
Adam is not alone if he feels alienated. Of all the lost souls paraded on screen during the movie, only Steve Oram’s brusque manager appears entirely comfortable around them and although his full-tilt cheer borders on menace, it may be because we are seeing him as through hero’s distorted vision lens. Faraz Ayub (who previously supported roles in Line of Duty and Giri/Haji) plays Adam who is lost and disoriented by modern Britain. He endangers himself; maybe others too? In order to follow up his dad’s death at Sky Peals Green car park, he rewinds back through one after another video recording looking for any footage which shows how his father moved last before dying and there sees an odd click suggesting that what he might actually see is a ghostly image appearing in front of him. Frequently called by his mum, Adam rarely responds. He has blackouts and believes he is cursed. One evening, whilst on his way home, its she mere presence alone appears to set off all the car alarms at the carpark.
Sometimes, Sky Peal’s lugubrious atmosphere of strangeness may seem somewhat unrelenting but this is a striking debut feature – disturbing, effective. In Hussain’s hands, the humble service station becomes a nightmare-postmodern limbo complete with the motorway as this world’s secular Styx. To get across it, Adam has to climb those echoing stairs and walk across a narrow covered bridge that shudders beneath flickering strip lights. He can’t know what lies beyond because he is too anguished It could be paradise or another planet or just the southbound section of a motorway in one service area while there is an identical burger bar opposite him with a man in its kitchen wondering if he’s in the wrong place.”
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