In His Shadow 2023 Movie Review
Love isn’t the only thing that’s blind on Netflix – so is the protagonist of their new original movie In His Shadow. That’s about where any similarity between their glossy reality show and this gritty French drama ends. If all you know of France is the ritzy streets of Paris, this high-stakes showdown in a majority-minority community is here to correct any assumptions.
Half-brothers Ibrahim (Kaaris) and Adama (Alassane Diong) reside in the banlieues on the outskirts of Paris after their father decides to open his own storefront in a Senegalese-French immigrant community. The two siblings diverge on many fronts, but perhaps the most visible (pun intended) is that a childhood accident potentially spurred on by black magic renders Adama blind. Many years later, Ibrahim is a neighborhood thug while Adama pursues his passion for music with his heightened auditory perception.
When their father dies tragically, it puts the two diametrically opposed brothers on a collision course of their destiny – with their sister Aïssata (Assa Sylla) and her boyfriend Malik (Carl Malapa) caught in the crossfire. Adama might seem unlikely to prevail in such a head-to-head contest. But the same witchy curse that made him blind could provide an unexpected way out.
At under 90 minutes, there’s just not enough time for writer/director Marc Fouchard to develop Kaaris’ idea upon which the film is based into anything substantial. In His Shadow relies on archetypes and genre conventions to fill in the gaps in this surface-level story. There are pockets of excitement that spring up within the movie, especially at the end when Fouchard does some intriguing things with Adama’s blindness. But these flourishes feel both too little and too late when the movie spends so much time spinning its wheels heading towards the inevitable climactic confrontation.
