Written and directed by Tim Morrill, Look into the Fire is a psychological thriller following a group of students attempting to look inside a person’s mind to reveal their thoughts. Samantha, Seth, Jerry, and their ringleader, Adam, create an experiment to prove their hypothesis. However, in the absence of any volunteers to participate, Adam makes himself part of the experiment so his team can gather the data they need. The drive behind Adam’s idea to see into someone’s mind is founded on proving guilt or innocence. This becomes more important as the mysterious plot of the film unfolds, embroiling Adam in a psychological journey to discover the truth of his past.
After the experiment, Adam scares his lab partners as he exhibits symptoms of memory loss and disorientation. Meaning well, Samantha takes Adam back to his apartment and spends the night to monitor his condition. However when Adam’s girlfriend returns and is faced with his strange behaviour and a strange woman in his house, she storms away, assuming the worst.
But this is only the beginning of Adam’s struggles. He is haunted by visions and nightmares, all seeming to lead back to a cabin in the woods. Something happened there but he is unable to reach inside his memory to retrieve the information.
The plot changes pace as Adam’s sister starts taking care of him when he is discharged from hospital after an overdose. The line between caring and overbearing quickly becomes blurred and it seems Adam’s sister becomes more threatening by the day. One of the characteristics of this film, is a continually shifting truth. While in one moment it seems Janet is dangerous and manipulative, in the next it seems she is caught up in a difficult situation trying to protect her brother from himself. Anxious to continue their experiment for class, the rest of the team plot to break Adam out of his sister’s house.
Even after escaping his controlling sister, all the mysteries and nightmares keep returning to Cabin 6, a place Adam, Janet and his parents had visited when they were kids. But what exactly unfolded there? When the rest of the lab crew decide they no longer want to use Adam as a subject, he must find a way into his own brain to uncover the truth about what happened to his mother many years ago. All his life he believed she had just left, but now it seems Adam may have had more to do with his mother’s disappearance than he ever could have imagined.
Dragging Janet to the cabin clicks something into place and the whole terrible truth comes flooding into Adam’s consciousness.
Or does it.
The swirling, interlocking psychological layers of Look into the Fire unfurl like the tentacles of an octopus. The distortion of reality only ever gets deeper, never resolving as the finale of the film leaves you re-evaluating everything that has happened.
Artie Shase does a fantastic job of piecing together and breaking apart the mental state of Adam. He plays particularly well against Nina E. Jordan as Janet; together they create a tormented relationship that has formed from the rot of deep trauma. Jordan and Shase fulfil these roles will depth and dimension. The supporting cast, especially the other members of the group project, are also very strong. Myles Brown as Seth and David Silva as Jerry manage to create strong personalities despite not being the main focus of the film. They help to add some light and shade to events, moving things along at a pace. Similarly Jackie Dallas as Samantha is a good bridge between the two almost separate narratives – the group of students are largely unaware of what is going on with Adam, but due to Samantha’s involvement, she prevents any narratological gapping and makes the plot more cohesive. Dallas executes this with conviction and strength, pulling the story together so that the experiment and Adam’s personal struggles remain tethered to common ground.
The creativity of the story is upheld with some good use of creative visual storytelling, especially during the dream/ hallucination sequences. Look into the Fire plays strongly into unease and disorientation, two themes that impact the film on every level, from the story itself to how it is represented on screen.
Compelling, climactic, and calamitous; watch the trailer below!