Parents' Guide to In His Shadow

This thriller comes close to being interesting, but in the end, it fails to do anything new, surprising, or different with the genre. Yes, the protagonist, Adama, in In His Shadow, is blind from a car accident in childhood, but even this "unique" aspect of his is side-stepped by the time the finale begins. Worse, the film explicitly frames this "weakness" as such and then tries to set up a climactic conflict wherein this weakness "will become [his] strength," as this quotation was his father's "greatest lesson" to Adama growing up. But before the climax or finale begins, Adama sees a witch doctor who cures him of his blindness, thus negating any possibility of what the first two-thirds of the film set up. Indeed, during the finale, Adama escapes police inquiry by faking that he's still a blind man, with sunglasses and cane, but at that point, any person could impersonate a blind man similarly, so the lesson the film spent its entirety setting up falls flat, as Adama actually doesn't use his "weakness" as his strength at all.

Further, Adama's older brother, Ibrahim, is ruthless and brutal, but the movie doesn't spend enough time justifying why he is that way or became that way. Many of his actions feel unrealistic, given what little is shown about him.