SINGAPORE — If our Christmas Eve was as thrilling, horrifying and emotionally draining as in this movie, I would’ve fainted from exhaustion and anxiety. After all, director Derek Kwok’s heart-pumping disaster movie revolves around a bunch of fire fighters who struggle to save a building on fire amidst a large-scale blackout on Christmas Eve.  

A belated Merry Christmas to you, too. 

Although the movie is supposed to be a disaster flick, it felt more like a horror show. Horrifying but in a good way, it had all the right melodramatic slow-motion effects accompained by the requisite eerie sounding background music - that even your holly jolly Christmas songs becomes the perfect horror show’s theme song. Slowy but surely, you’re absorbed into an almost claustrophobic fear of fires. And that was even before I saw… the burning tongues of fire. 

With Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue, Simon Yam and Hu Jun realistically taking on their roles as firefighters, not to mention Kwok’s visually stunning cinematography, the movie draws you into a kind of dream state. With a canvas painted in almost-too-real greyish hue throughout, you feel like you are surrounded by the smoke itself.

Admittedly, there are a few unnecessary and confusing sub-plots. Nevertheless, its two main actors, Tse and Yue, still managed to capture my attention as the movie peaked. I was completely transfixed, wanting to find out how it all ended.

(PG13, 115 mins)