Pari

Pari starring Anushka Sharma is a horror film that isn’t entirely typical. It’s not devoid of the horror genre clichés like the tricks one use to scare the audience. But the emotional conflict it has got makes it a more interesting movie and even though it has a revenge agenda, it feels like it has got something beyond that. I am not a big fan of horror movies as I have found most of them repeating the same idea and for that reason I would say Pari was a better film.

Arnab is this young man who is thinking about settling down and getting married. One day his car got involved in a crash and a lady died in that accident. The mysterious lady’s only daughter Rukhsana who was totally insulated from the outer world eventually seeks help from Arnab. How this changes Arnab’s life because there were people behind Rukhsana for some strange reasons is what Pari talking about.

What I found interesting about Pari is that it is not trying to be that frequently scary movie. It is more like an inner conflict of the possessed. Prosit Roy and Abhishek Bannerjee have managed to tweak the existing mould. You might argue about the coherency of the climatic act. But I felt that the coherency factor sort of arises from the podium created by other horror films and they are all actually fiction. The sub plot of Arnab’s would-be also gets woven into the plot with less cheesiness and the intentions of the Professor character played by Rajat Kapoor looks authentic.

Anushka Sharma gets into the skin of the character easily. She manages to keep in mind the lack of exposure of the character to the external world. More than Anushka I liked the way how Parambrata Chatterjee underplayed Arnab in this movie. His way of minimalism somehow makes the humane side of the narrative more endearing. Rajat Kapoor makes the professor character believable and Ritabhari Chakraborty was also good as Piyali.

Debutant Prosit Roy has cracked the middle ground in being fresh and formulaic. While it is still running on the revenge idea, there are things that make this revenge theme a little different from the usual ones. That climax is a difficult idea to convince and a lot depends on that scene on whether Pari will work for you or not. Scaring the crap out of you isn’t the only requirement of a horror film in my opinion and Pari was able to add more than that to its tale. The visuals are perfectly colored and the blended visual effects, especially the first single shot inside the car makes it a technically solid movie. The sound design and music was good and the cuts were also exciting.

Pari was an interesting experience for me as the emotional factor made it more unique when compared to the standard template. It may not be completely out of the box, but it has elements that push it away from being a usual horror film.

Rating: 3/5