Release date:
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July 18, 2014
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Director:
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Akshay Akkineni
|
Cast:
Language:
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Akshay Oberoi,
Parvathy Omanakuttan, Dipannita Sharma, Arunoday Singh, Rajesh Sharma, Omkar
Das Manikpuri, D. Santhosh, Hussain Dalal
Hindi
|
Pizza is terrifying.
There you go – you don’t have to get to the last paragraph to discover the bottomline of this review. Debutant director Akshay Akkineni’s 3D supernatural thriller Pizza – a psychological thriller if you
wish to see it that way – is terrifying.
This is a Hindi remake of the Tamil film of the
same name released in 2012. The original was directed by Karthik Subbaraj, and
starred Vijay Sethupathy and Remya Nambeesan in roles played here by Akshay
Oberoi and Parvathy Omanakuttan. This latest version is what the retelling of a
well-told story should be: the screenplay remains pretty much the same, yet there
are enough changes in the treatment to improve upon the strong foundation laid
by Subbaraj.
Pizza begins with Kunal (Oberoi) waking up from a nightmare. He’s one of those people who
doesn’t ‘believe’ in ghosts, yet like everyone who does not, somewhere deep
down inside he actually does. Is there a human being out there who can escape a
fear of the unknown?
Kunal is a pizza delivery boy who lives with his
wife Nikita (Omanakuttan), an aspiring writer of ghost stories. They lead a
rather normal life with all the regular problems that young urban couples have.
An unplanned pregnancy briefly disrupts the peace at home, since Kunal worries about
how they will bring up a child on their modest income, but that quarrel too is
quickly resolved. Then one day he visits the home of his boss whose wife, it
turns out, is possessed by the spirit of someone called Anjali. And life is
never the same again.
How that turn of events leads Kunal to a haunted
bungalow is something I will leave you to discover when you watch this
excellent spook story, the best to emerge from Bollywood since Ram Gopal Varma
made Bhoot in 2003. In the months and
years that followed the success of Bhoot,
there were many that tried desperately to clone the chills. What they did
instead was trot out tons of clichés ranging from ear-splitting, screechy sound
effects to women with hair falling over glazed eyes, humans flying through the
air, litres of blood and goo, and ominous, mantra-chanting holy men of all
faiths. It was hard not to be exasperated, amused and/or disappointed by them
all, including Varma’s own lifeless Bhoot Returns in 2012.
The best horror films don’t allow viewers to feel conscious
of how they are being manipulated. Just a handful of Mumbai directors – Vikram Bhatt
among them – have hit the nail on the head, and just occasionally at that, in
this genre in the past decade. While one has to admit that the bar is not high
in Bollywood, it’s not fair to judge Akkineni by that: he pole-vaults a mile
above it.
The selling point of the original Pizza was the number of twists in the
tale in the second half. Its weakness was that the scares in the first half,
while genuine, were too few and far between. When the hero was trapped in that
haunted house, there were too many long patches of inaction between the patches
of frightening action. The Hindi remake plugs that loophole so thoroughly that
it makes Kunal’s time in the bungalow its USP – an extended sequence of
unrelenting, heart-stopping, thankfully low-on-gore, gasp-inducing jolts that I
confess had me cowering in my seat.
The second half does not manage to sustain the pace
of panic, but the job has been done by then. Besides, there’s at least one very
neat twist coming up; and much else to like, such as the fact that it feels
like a slice of real life in terms of its settings, costumes and the manner in
which relationships play out. In the interactions between Kunal and Nikita,
especially their tensions over their unborn baby, it also shows that a film
does not have to be preachy or “about a social issue” to deliver social
commentary.
Sound design is crucial to a horror flick. This
one has so much audio clarity that you can clearly distinguish between Kunal’s
footsteps on a wooden floor and on a carpet in a deserted corridor. Tapas Nayak
is the man behind this delightful detailing. Pizza also uses interesting graphics for its opening credits. The
3D is a worthwhile add-on. And the music, though not as splendid as Santhosh
Narayanan’s background score for the Tamil film, is goosebump-inducing all the
same.
The screenplay is backed by a cast that is good even
if not as solid as the stars of the Tamil film. Akshay Oberoi is effective but does
not have the acting depth of Vijay Sethupathy. Arunoday Singh, who hit the nail
on the head with his performances in Aisha
(2010) and Yeh Saali Zindagi (2011), is
the weak link here, the only one whose appearances in the scary scenes border
on the farcical – unlike the others, he looks like that naughty elder brother
or cousin who waits around the corner to scare kids with rolling eyes and a
loud “bowww”. Omanakuttan’s so-far untapped range is evident here. And Rajesh
Sharma as the superstitious pizzeria owner is sturdy as always.
If you haven’t seen the original film then I’d
strongly suggest that you avoid it and its plot synopsis on the Internet until
you’ve seen this one. I held off watching the Tamil Pizza until I’d seen the Hindi remake this week. No doubt my response
to this film would have been different if I’d done things the other way round.
No doubt too, my response to the original would have been different if I’d seen
it first. Goes without saying that each of us reacts uniquely to every film we
watch depending on the sum total of our life’s experiences, our tastes and
where we are at that point in time. Be warned: one of my fellow critics at the
press preview of Pizza was highly
amused at those of us who were petrified by the proceedings on screen. Me? I
was scared witless in the first half of Pizza.
The second half slows down, but it still had me hooked.
Rating
(out of five stars): ***1/2
CBFC Rating (India):
|
A
|
Running time:
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117 minutes
|
Poster and trailer courtesy: UTV Spotboy
