REVIEW 396: PHOBIA

Release date:	May 27, 2016
Director:	Pavan Kirpalani
Cast: Language:	Radhika Apte, Satyadeep Mishra, Ankur Vikal, Yashaswini Dayama Hindi

Bollywood has a lousy track record with horror films in the past couple of decades. Most makers of spookfests and mind benders in Hindi have, for what seems like the recent forever, tried to manipulate audiences with screeching sounds, sudden camera movements and other clichés.

Phobia has no time for such low-brow nonsense. Director Pavan Kirpalani’s third film is a heart-stoppingly frightening thriller that refuses to take the viewer for granted. His first, Ragini MMS in 2011, was flawed but proved that he was cut out for the genre. Phobia is simply brilliant in the way it rolls up to the multiple massive surprises in the end. This is seriously scary, seriously intriguing stuff that, as it happens, features a career-defining performance by Radhika Apte.

The film begins with wickedly chosen clues. Franz Kafka’s words, “A cage went in search of a bird”, appear on screen before the camera closes in on a painting. Next we meet artist Mehek Deo (Radhika Apte), surrounded by what seem like friends and admirers at her exhibition while she narrates a story about a cat and a weird old man and gently ribs a chap called Shaan (Satyadeep Mishra). Everything in that apparently innocuous scene is crucial to what follows.

Soon after, Mehek is sexually assaulted and develops agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder that leads her to fear leaving her home. Shaan, her some-time lover and full-time friend, takes her away from the flat she occupied with her sister with whom she shares a tense relationship, to a friend’s apartment since he is sure solitude will cure her. He does not, however, anticipate the creepy neighbour (Ankur Vikal) and the diary of an ex-tenant who went missing, which start preying on Mehek’s mind. What follows is a hair-raising parade of visions, violence and then gore.

Satyen Chaudhry’s design of the rented house is crucial to the panic building up in Mehek’s mind and the anticipation mounting in ours. The air of decaying prosperity, the walls bearing paintings with darkened human figures that could easily be mistaken for mirrors in which we are possibly seeing a reflection of someone watching Mehek from behind – it is all very spooky.

Jayakrishna Gummadi’s camera occasionally changes vantage points so that we sometimes watch the proceedings as outsiders and sometimes right beside or behind Mehek, hoping to see what she sees. His work, Vivek Sachidanand’s sound design and Karan Gour’s background score never once make us conscious of how they are working to play around with our heads.

Fully backing the talent backing him, the director builds up a sense of foreboding from the very first shot. He occasionally relieves the tension with a genre cliché – a bathtub, a musical timepiece, a peephole, a character opting to enter an eerie place though we as viewers are smart enough to know it probably houses a ghost – possibly to convince us that since this is familiar ground, we are well prepared for what comes next. In one scene, a knife is conveniently left in the vicinity of a patient with a grave psychological ailment. As it turns out, a cliché is not a cliché and a loophole is not a lazy loophole if what you saw is not what you think you saw.

There are brief passages of humour in Shaan and Mehek’s fights and when her paranoid actions border on the farcical. A formulaic filmmaker trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator might have used such scenes to mock Mehek and mental maladies. Not Kirpalani. These interludes serve to lull our senses before – boom! – another plot twist smacks us in the nerves.

Mehek is popular, attractive and knows her mind. Watching her develop a phobia is akin to the shock you get when you discover that someone like Robin Williams suffered from severe depression. “How could a funny man be depressed?” here becomes “how could a feisty woman be afraid?” Medical professionals could explain whether the film is accurate in its depiction of agoraphobia, but this is for sure: by painting Mehek as a lively creature in that brief introduction, Kirpalani overturns the stereotypes about mental illness that so many of us harbour. Bravo!

This is truly intelligent writing all around: the story is by Kirpalani himself, he co-wrote the screenplay with Arun Sukumar, and the naturally flowing dialogues are by Pooja Ladha Surti who is also responsible for the film’s crisp, clever editing.

At the heart of it all is the wonderful Radhika Apte who is pitch perfect as Mehek. Apte has already built an impressive filmography in character roles across Indian film industries in the past decade. Her experience shows in Phobia in which she dominates the story and the camera rests on her almost throughout, without the strain showing for even a second.

She is ably supported by believable performances from the entire supporting cast. Yashaswini Dayama playing her slightly kookie teenaged neighbour is a find.

Though the film’s primary goal is to scare the bejeezus out of us, it is also filled with acute social insights. For instance, Mehek’s fear of the outside results from a sexual assault, yet in her flat she is stuck with the devil within. In that sense, Phobia is a metaphor for the omnipresence of sexual predators in a world where women are told to cover up, not step out late, not step out alone, not step into crowds, all to protect themselves, but judgmental misogynists have no answer for what is to be done about sexual marauders within homes, families, offices and among acquaintances.

Mehek’s actions in her new home are an effort to help a woman she never knew. Her innate goodness, the risks a chirpy neighbour (Yashaswini Dayama) takes for her, the lengths to which Shaan goes for her indicate the film’s non-black-&-white view of the world. When we first see Mehek, it is evident she has a wide social circle. When it comes to the crunch though, the only one by her side is Shaan. Even her seemingly loving sister turns on her with alarming ferocity when she becomes an inconvenience. Then Mehek steps up for a stranger, then a stranger steps up for her. The crowd at the party does not turn up for Mehek, but decency is clearly not dead.

Ghost flick, psychological thriller, social commentary or all the above – in the end, Phobia is what you want it to be for yourself. It is also, without question, a superbly entertaining film.

Rating (out of five): ****

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	112 minutes

Poster courtesy: Raindrop Media

REVIEW 47: 404 ERROR NOT FOUND

Release date:	May 20, 2011
Director:	Prawal Raman
Cast:	Rajvvir Aroraa, Nishikant Kamat, Imaad Shah, Tisca Chopra, Satish Kaushik

Hindi films are in a mood for paranormal activity these days. After Vikram Bhatt’s Haunted (3D) and Pavan Kirpalani’s Ragini MMS, comes 404 Error Not Found. The film is directed by Prawal Raman who has earlier been associated with the horror/wacko short story compilations Darna Mana Hai and Darna Zaroori Hai. Like those two films, 404 too is a mixed bag of goods that achieves quite a bit despite its weak points.

404 is set in a medical college at the start of an academic year when new students are being broken in by their seniors. When fresher Abhimanyu complains to the authorities, the ragging worsens for him and his roommates. He decides to move into a separate room so that his friends are not victimised. The choice of room is pivotal to this story: No. 404 which has remained locked for three years, since its last occupant committed suicide. The college administration hands the key over to Abhimanyu reluctantly because of the rumours that had prompted them to shut it off in the first place. Abhimanyu for his part is a rationalist who is determined to prove to his fellow students that ghosts don’t exist. But the ragging takes an unprecedented turn when the seniors who he had angered decide to hypnotise him into obsessing about the dead boy.

It’s heartening to see Bollywood experimenting with such an unusual storyline. 404 blends the supernatural and the rational, psychiatry, academia, mental illness and ragging so seamlessly that in the end you are not sure whether what you are seeing is what you are seeing or a figment of a character’s imagination.

None of this would have been possible without the choice of location and Savita Singh’s cinematography which manages to build up the college campus as an eerie, vast space with unending corridors, intimidating stairwells, high-ceilinged lecture halls and enough roominess to spook anyone. Except for a couple of occasions, the background score doesn’t fall into the usual trap that most Hindi horror thrillers have found inescapable in the past decade or so: it’s not too loud and it does not feel manipulative. And wonder of wonders, IF there is a ghost in this film – and I’m not saying there is, I’m not saying there is not either – then that ‘ghost’ is not a cackling female figure in a white sari with long black hair partially falling over her glazed eyes! Yes yes, I do intend to kill you with the suspense that sentence creates. And if this were a tweet I’d place a winking emoticon right at this point!

The actors are a talented bunch. Newcomer Rajvvir Aroraa effectively underplays the traumatised fresher. Imaad Shah as the heartless senior has just the right swagger for the part. Satish Kaushik is convincing as the sympathetic college staffer who has the courage to admit that he won’t dismiss ghost stories outright. Most interesting of them all is Nishikant Kamat who Hindi film audiences have known so far as the director of Mumbai Meri Jaan. While playing Abhimanyu’s well-meaning though slightly pompous professor, he is remarkably easy before the camera; so easy, that I’m willing to forgive him for that sole mucked-up scene in which he fearfully tip-toes into a room, but ends up looking more comical than pathetic.

Unfortunately, despite all the right ingredients, 404 Error Not Found does not entirely come together. While there are portions that are frightening, some that are fascinating because of their open-endedness, there are also places where the film risks losing its grip on the viewer. One problem is the verbosity of Kamat’s professor which demands too much of an attention span from the viewer: the man just doesn’t seem to stop talking and some of his dialogues are written more like lectures than natural conversations! The too-clever-by-half title doesn’t work either. Perhaps in a bid to make the college campus as unnerving as possible, it’s presented to us with nary a human being in sight except for the main players in our story. Just as unconvincing is the fact that the college faculty – who are portrayed as a benevolent bunch – do precious little as a student appears to sink further and further into a severe mental ailment. And no, it’s not okay to bring up a bipolar patient’s “manic phase” in passing, treating it as nothing more than a missing piece of a puzzle in a mystery story: I’m not asking for a thesis on bipolar disorder, I’m just saying there is little awareness about mental illnesses in our country and it’s not acceptable to leave the audience to play guessing games on a subject as serious as this (a lady seated right behind me while I was watching this film was loudly speculating about whether the reference was to Alzheimer’s disease … I rest my case).

But as I weigh the pros and cons of 404 Error Not Found, it’s impossible to brush it aside. Because the film does raise interesting questions as it fuses multiple themes: Where does fun end and danger begin in ragging? If academic research is done at the cost of a single human life, is it acceptable to casually shrug off the sacrifice as “collateral damage” for the greater good of society? And here’s the part that puts me in the same frame of mind as when I saw the ending of Manoj Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense: if you do watch 404 Error Not Found, do write to me and tell  me whether you saw what you saw or what the professor saw or what Abhimanyu saw? Now if this were a tweet I’d once again place a winking emoticon right at this point.

Rating (out of five): **3/4

CBFC Rating:                      U/A without cuts (the film was initially offered an A certificate, but was subsequently changed to U/A by a review committee)

Running time:                        118 Minutes

Language:                              Hindi

Photograph courtesy: http://tinyurl.com/3l7hjul (via Facebook)