Film Review – Sky Peals (2023)

Moin Hussain’s debut feature, Sky Peals, is a masterful dive into the quiet despair of modern existence, wrapped in a sensorial reality that feels as if it’s perpetually caught in limbo. Set in the muted, almost purgatorial environment of a desolate service station, the film introduces us to Adam Muhammed—a night-shift worker whose life seems to by in a fast-forward blur of nothingness. Adam isn’t just invisible to the world; he’s almost invisible to himself, drifting through life like a ghost trapped in a self-imposed inertia.

Adam is a man on the fringes, not by choice but by an almost eerie inevitability. He’s the embodiment of the unseen, the untouched of this world. A man navigated his life up to his 30s, bare of interests or character, like an undissolved drop in the ocean of life. He is a man who doesn’t pick up the phone easily and doesn’t have much to say if he does. There’s a haunting quality to his silence; he’s not shy or modest, just profoundly disconnected. He’s simply a contemporary recluse. 

But, naturally, everyone comes from somewhere and has somewhere to go. It’s this forgotten lineage that pulls Adam from his quiet void—a call from his long-lost Pakistani father. Before Adam pulls himself to return the call, his father is dead, dragging Adam in a liminal space between reality and a dreamscape. Hussain captures this with authentic abstract imagery that takes us deep into Adam’s subconscious. The faded, cloudy VHS footage evokes the hazy, unreliable nature of memory—where the past is forever coloured by the present, and the future is always out of focus.

Hussain’s story might read as an abstract thesis on secular existentialism, scaled down by mediations on identity, roots, and the idea of home (within the UK’s cultural landscape). Yet it is undemanding, introspective, and consistent all the way. Every silence and every shadow speak volumes. The dialogues, expected maybe by many, are laconic and sharp, leaving nothing extraneous behind. Hussain’s use of space and darkness doesn’t evoke fear but rather invites contemplation. He provides possibilities to expand our perception (I guess that’s why the film is characterised as sci-fi) by loading Adam with questions about his origins and his current position in the world. Is he a British-Pakistani, or is he an alien, like his father thought for himself—adrift in a world where he’s never quite at home? 

This question lingers, never quite answered, as Adam stumbles through moments of social friction and disorienting, sleepwalking episodes that push him toward a conclusion he’s neither prepared for nor fully understands. With his idle facial expressions and lack of spark, he wills himself up to secure some explanation. But as an antihero he is, he doesn’t stir up anything. He is drifting around in a constant state of confusion, and things happen to him. He finds himself in the middle of social confrontations or sleepwalk instances that won’t clear up the air but call for his reaction, which eventually will lead him to make his answer up. 

Sky Peals isn’t a story that asks to be dissected between fact and fantasy. It’s a film that defies mellow twists, offering something more raw and authentic. Devoid of a conventional narrative, it touches something deeper—a resonant chord that hums long after the credits roll. Accept it as it comes, and let it sink in.

★★★★

In UK cinemas from 9 August / Faraz Ayu, Natalie Gavin, Claire Rushbrook, Simon Nagra, Steve Oram, Jeff Mirza / Dir: Moin Hussain / Escape Films, Film4 / 12A