IN THE FIRE - Mark Reviews Movies

In the Fire, Saban Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 12, 2023

Desperate people lash out, looking for something to blame for their troubles. That's the case in In the Fire, a story about a doctor, specializing in a relatively new field of medicine, who is confronted by forces of anxiety and uncertainty. Their target is a young boy, who has become a scapegoat in a small town, simply because he is different.

The foundation for a thoughtful and compelling story is here, and for a while, co-writer/director Conor Allyn's movie gets at some harsh truths about people's fear of the different, how religious beliefs can heighten and misdirect those worries, and the difference a little compassion can make for someone who is not accustomed to even the slightest kindness and consideration. There's a considerable flaw in the calculation of this tale, though, and it leads to a sour, hypocritical conclusion that goes against the story's apparent thesis, while leaving the wrong questions left unanswered.

Our protagonist is Dr. Grace Burnham (Amber Heard), who has come from New York City to a plantation outside town somewhere in the Southwest. A woman has written the doctor, who studies and practices psychology—a relatively nascent field in the movie's setting of the 1890s. This woman's son has difficulty socializing and with empathy, and the mother is increasingly worried that her boy won't be able to lead a normal life. Worse, she doesn't know what to do about it.

Upon Grace's arrival, she quickly discovers that all sorts of tragedies have befallen this place. Locusts are destroying the crops. People are hungry and on the brink of starvation. There's a draught, and a mysterious plague is slowly devastating the population. In terms of the boy and his family, the mother was killed in an accident, when her son lost control of a horse or intentionally rode it too fast, resulting in the mother being trampled to death. The boy's father Nicholas Marquez (Eduardo Noriega), who owns and runs the plantation, doesn't know what to do about his son, and after his wife's death, he doesn't much seem to care, either.

The central point here is that Martin (Lorenzo McGovern Zaini) appears to be on the autism spectrum. As she talks to and gets to know the boy, Grace makes a diagnosis of savant syndrome, because Martin is especially intelligent, teaching himself the violin, and has trouble comprehending various social cues.

Just as his father is ready to give up on him, Martin finds an unexpected ally, friend, and confidant in Grace, whose presence as a professional woman who stands up for herself is an irritation for Nicholas. Let's just say he comes around to enjoying her company, in a development that comes across as forced and doesn't add anything to the core of the story except predictability.

The other side of the debate surrounding Martin comes from local priest Fr. Gavira (Yari Gugliucci), who baptized a baby Martin and held him underwater for too long, and the townsfolk. They're convinced the boy has been possessed by evil—specifically the devil. It's not much a debate, of course, because the area's problems have little to nothing to do with a child, and with the rational Grace as our focal point, we just watch as the desperation, compounded by religious fervor, escalates.

Threats are made. The plantation's priest Fr. Antonio (Luca Calvani), who sees Grace's work with Martin— regardless of what's causing the boy's condition—as a form of divine intervention, is whipped in the public square for defending the kid. People start plotting revenge for the general state of the town or for specific incidents that they're convinced are Martin's doing.

Even with some on-the-nose dialogue in the screenplay (written by the director with Pascal Borno and Silvio Muraglia), the movie takes its time to explore and examine this divide between hard logic and twisted faith. The results are decidedly mixed, partially because the script is in such a rush to make its point and breezes through any serious consideration of Martin and his condition, but the filmmakers' hearts and minds seem to be in the right place. The same goes for Heard, whose performance is mainly hampered by some of the clunkier bits of dialogue and that strange leap in Grace and Nicholas' relationship.

What goes wrong is probably too predictable to speak around, given the setup of the fight between science and religion, but there are gradual hints that maybe Martin's state of mind isn't as complex and medically straightforward as Grace suspects. Is that just the doctor feeling the influence of so many people around her and the intensity of treating/tending to the boy, or is there really something else going on here? In the Fire has an answer, provided with very little rationalization or justification and even less prompting, and it's as disingenuous and, within the context of what the movie makes an effort to portray as Martin's condition, troublesome as such an answer can be.

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