This horror/ thriller revolves around a mysterious girl Rukhsana who is of unnatural origin.I wouldn’t be able to explain the plot any further without giving away the suspense.
The story makes a perfect and mysterious beginning. A woman dying in a road accident and a disoriented and grotty woman found shackled in the middle of a forest ( Anushka ). The intense mystery and suspense continue till the interval keeping you absolutely glued and riveted. The director not only grips your attention but manages to spook you with a dark, gloomy set up and a constant sense of foreboding.
All the while you keep worrying about Arnab (Parambrata Chatterjee) who somehow gets entangled with the mysterious woman (avoiding spoiler here ) .
In the background we see some mysterious evil looking man ( Rajat Kapoor) hunting for a woman.
In the first half, the film seems like a perfect thriller and potential horror. Its extremely riveting and chilling without those usual cliched spook elements.
To me ,a good horror is something that scares you without those sudden jerky screechy scenes that actually startle more than scare .Its that constant sense of fear even without those typical night scenes that makes a good horror.
Till the interval, Pari scores high on both counts. There’s a constant sense of doom and evil without even knowing who or what is evil .
Post interval, when the plot begins to unravel, the writer looses that firm grip on the story. The movie now turns from a thriller to horror and the director does resort to some of the formulaic spook scenes.By the time you arrive at the muddled climax, you aren’t as scared as in the beginning and not too happy with loopholes and lags in the fag end.
Apart from the spook and doom, there’s also a lot of blood and some gore.
Satan , satanic chants, witch hunters and witches, evil births , there’s a lot . But somehow the scary element gets lost in this milieu.
The story, directed by Prosit Roy and co- written by him and Abhishek Banerjee, is based in Kolkata with origins in Dhaka. Kolkata and its dingy bylanes has been used well in building up the sense of dark and gloom . In fact,Jishnu Bhattacharjee’s cinematography must be given a lot of credit too. Prosit Roy who was an assistant director in Ek thhi Dayan, touches upon indirectly, the same concept as in that movie, of evil residing in each of us and good residing even in evil.
Watch the trailer here:
Anushka gives a very balanced performance. To play a character that is innocent, vulnerable and evil ,scary and scared is not an easy task. She manages to portray all of that with aplomb. I have been very biased towards Anushka inspite of her impressive filmography and all it took was this horror,for me to appreciate her with a full heart.
Parambrata is as good as he was in Kahaani. He plays a very quiet and introvert man and gives a very restrained performance.
Rajat Kapoor is good as the evil looking professor .
The film begins extremely well but sadly does not end that well. There is a lot of mumbo jumbo in the explanations ,some of it unpleasant and some downright silly and lot of glitches too.
But I would still rate this as a good horror for the reasons stated above . At least till half of the movie, it manages to scare you well and that too without the cliches. Add to that the fact that it has good actors and performances.
In an industry where you hardly find quality movies in this genre being churned out, its a welcome thing.After NH10, Phillauri and now Pari , I would definitely look forward to Anushka ‘s next home production , for she’s sure to dole out something completely non regular.
Score 7 on 10