Pari – Not a Fairytale but a tale with a heart

Movie: Pari - Not a Fairytale

Cast: Anushka Sharma, Parambrata Chatterjee, Rajat Kapoor, Ritabhari Chakraborty

Rating: ***

Fairy tales to me are never happy, sweet stories. They're moral stories about overcoming the dark side and the bad. -  Joe Wright

The movie starts with two parallel stories. One where Arnab (Parambrata Chatterjee) comes across Rukhsana (Anushka Sharma) under certain dire circumstances and the other where a Professor from Dhaka University has started a revolution to kill all of Ifrit’s (Satan) children to free the world from evil. These two parallel stories soon intertwine with each other when Professor goes hunting for Rukhsana.

The first half of the film is fast paced and goes into introducing the various plots and characters. In the second half, the pace dips and falters a little as the film goes towards developing the story, relationships and characters. This film  also showcases how we as society do not allow the underprivileged to come up in life and even if they try to lead a better life we suppress them for our own gains.

This movie is not filled with cheap scares and thrills. The film is set in a rainy old Kolkata inside big old houses with high ceilings and latched wooden windows. Director Prosit Roy uses a lot of silence and everyday noises to keep you at the edge of your seat. Reminded me of The Shining where silence spooked me the most.  But there are a few jump scares along the way(after all it’s a horror movie). And I bet you will never look at agarbattis, earphones and nailcutters the same way after watching this film. Boroline plays a very vital role in the movie too (You will totally relate to this if you are Bengali). To point out the lows - A few supernatural scenes with Anushka Sharma were not very well shot and seemed a little comical and the story became a tad bit over complicated.

The performances in this film are very strong. Anushka Sharma delivers yet another powerful performance after NH10. She transforms so easily from an innocent childlike girl to a violent revenge-seeking monster. She has realized that she needs to produce films to bring out the best in her. Parambrata as the shy and helpless regular Bengali boy is so convincing. He never overdoes it and gives a very consistent performance. Rajat Kapoor as always delivers in such a way that he sends shivers whenever he is on the screen. Last of all debutant director Prosit Roy has made a brave attempt to handle the horror genre in a way which is very new in Bollywood.

Do go and watch the movie to check out this new take on horror movies in Bollywood.