REVIEW 283: INTO THE STORM

Release date (India):	August 8, 2014
Director:	Steven Quale
Cast: Language:	Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Alycia Debnam-Carey, Nathan Kress, Max Deacon, Jerry Sumpter, Arlen Escarpeta, Scott Lawrence English

Into The Storm is a 90-minute-long unrelenting adrenaline rush. Not much more. Nothing less.

The humans in the film are subordinate to the tornadoes that strike, as is the case with all natural disaster movies. The difference here is that director Steven Quale does not pretend otherwise. Disaster flicks require incredible writing skills to convey genuine involvement in the lives of their characters. Most end up being schmaltzy and/or cliched in the effort. Into The Storm takes an alternative route, which too is not a bad idea: it gives us three primary characters around whom to wrap the twisters, but unlike other films of the genre, it does not for a second claim to be more concerned about them than it is about ensuring that the audience has an awesome special-effects-ridden experience.

And awesome it truly is! Every long shot of towns being uprooted, every medium shot and close-up of those ghastly winds, that Gravity-like uplifting scene in the eye of a storm (“a sight only God has seen”)… awesome is an understatement. You can guess how much fun this film is from the fact that I’ve used that awful word here thrice already, after years of threatening to boycott teenaged friends every time they utter it.

The people in the story are incidental but not insignificant. First up is Garry (Richard Armitage), vice-principal of a high school in the US town of Silverton, which is preparing for the graduation of its senior class. Garry has asked his sons to record on-camera messages from the students passing out, for a time capsule to be opened in 25 years. Trey (Nathan Kress) follows his father’s instructions, while Donnie (Max Deacon) quietly takes off to help his schoolmate and long-time crush Caitlyn (Alycia Debnam-Carey) with an assignment. Then there’s Pete (Matt Walsh), a professional storm chaser travelling around the country with a team, in a tank that can withstand winds up to 170mph, followed by a van that is in effect a meteorological department on the move. Finally, there’s Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies), Pete’s met expert who is missing her little daughter back home.

Into The Storm is a film in the found footage genre. If you’ve seen the Paranormal Activity series (or Dibakar Banerjee’s Love Sex Aur Dhoka and Pavan Kripalani’s Ragini MMS here at home), you know what that means: a film running partly or fully on footage shot by characters in the drama. The idea behind the genre is to conjure up a sense of reality, a feeling that we as viewers have been a part of the filmmaking process along with the person/s – known or unknown – behind the camera. Into The Storm smartly escapes the sometimes-physically-nauseating shakiness of such films though, with the plot cleverly ensuring that the characters operating the equipment are either pros (Pete’s videographers) or accomplished amateurs (Trey and Donnie).

The desire to convey a moral-of-the-story right in the end marginally diminishes Into The Storm. The simplistic nature of the message makes it worse. According to this film, in times of crisis we discover a core of basic human goodness in even the worst people. Perhaps this is true in most cases. Yet it’s naïve to not also acknowledge the existence of pure, unvarnished evil. The healthy youngster who pushes aside an old or pregnant person to escape a stampede is not a fiction. Locals who steal jewellery and cash from corpses at plane crash sites are not a fiction. The truth is that crisis brings out the best in some people and the worst in others.

This brief detour is an unnecessary diversion in a film that otherwise sticks doggedly to being an SFX fiesta. As things stand, it’s a visual spectacle. Brian Tyler’s music stays just right – at no point is it overwhelming. And the lives of Garry, Pete and Allison are given minimalist treatment, which is what makes them so effective. A lesser film might have delivered long-drawn-out back-stories and rounded things off with a mushy Garry-Allison romance; this one chooses to end in an unexpected fashion on that front.

A friend asked as we left the hall: What’s the difference between Into The Storm and Twister (that 1996 film about tornadoes starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton)? Answer: this one has less story and has taken advantage of 18 years of advancements in film technology to deliver even better special effects.

Into The Storm will probably become obsolete as soon as a new twister film with next-generation SFX comes around. For the moment though, the effects are breathtaking, the pace is spot-on and the inexorable tension is mind-blowing. If you are looking for emotional depth, you won’t find much of it here. But just as some folk go to watch Fast and Furious films simply to see fast cars, if your tastes lie in that direction then Into The Storm is worth watching simply for the storm. Believe me, it is (here comes that awful word again) awesome.

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

CBFC Rating (India):	U/A
Running time: MPAA Rating (US):	90 minutes PG-13 (for sequences of intense destruction and peril, and language including some sexual references)
Release date in the US:	August 8, 2014

Poster courtesy: https://www.facebook.com/IntotheStormMovie

REVIEW 249: RAGINI MMS 2

Release date:	March 21, 2014
Director:	Bhushan Patel
Cast: Language:	Sunny Leone, Saahil Prem, Parvin Dabas, Karan Mehra, Sandhya Mridul, Divya Dutta Hindi

Caveat: There's far less sex in Ragini MMS 2 than the promos would suggest.
In fact, except for this brief girl-on-girl kiss, there's nothing in the film that
mainstream Hindi film audiences have not already seen in Murder,
Yeh Saali Zindagi and Saheb Biwi aur Gangster, in an increasingly
sexually active Bollywood

If you’ve already watched Ragini MMS 2 with the sole goal of seeing soft porn in an Indian theatre, then the joke’s on you. The sequel to 2011’s Ragini MMS has been promoted as a horrex (horror + sex) film, and since porn star Sunny Leone is the lead, expectations are high on that front. Here’s the thing: the film is actually pretty neat in the scares and humour department, but as far as sex goes, well… I can think of several Hindi films that have delivered as much or more bedroom activity in an increasingly sexually active Bollywood.

As consolation I suppose, the camera repeatedly gapes at Leone’s football-sized breasts in teeny clothing – but you could buy posters of her for that, no? In the opening song we get unrelenting overhead shots of her barely-clothed prone body with her hands placed over the nipple area – which is kind of funny since still and moving shots of a nude Leone from every conceivable angle are easily available on the Internet. She wanders around looking fantastic in a tiny tight T-shirt and panties in an abandoned, haunted mansion late at night – which is such an in-your-face effort to titillate that it had the effect of making me giggle in the middle of an otherwise anxiety-inducing scene. And she kisses a girl, and the Censor Board has passed that lip-to-lip girl-on-girl exchange – which is a dramatic new development in the history of Indian film censorship but no big deal for Leone.

The film features just one actual sex scene with the leading lady, and that too doesn’t cross any frontiers beyond what Bollywood has already crossed in the likes of Murder, Yeh Saali Zindagi and Saheb Biwi aur Gangster in recent years. Those who won’t be satisfied with a toned-down version of a pornographic star may prefer to stay at home and google “Sunny Leone videos”. For the rest of you, here’s my review.

Ragini MMS 2 takes off precisely where the first instalment left off. Remember Ragini and her boyfriend had gone off for a sex romp over the weekend to an ancient haveli? He meant to shoot them together in bed and sell the video, but the ghost of the house had other plans. End: the boy is dead and the girl has gone out of her mind.

Fast forward to Film 2 and the renowned director Rocks (Parvin Dabas) is making a film about what happened to Ragini. The heroine of this film-in-a-film is to be played by porn star Sunny (that’s Leone’s character’s name). Also in the picture is the self-obsessed, horny leading man (Karan Mehra), the ambitious supporting actress Monali (Sandhya Mridul), writer Satya (Saahil Prem) and a psychiatrist studying Ragini’s case (Divya Dutta). Kainaz Motivala from the first film makes an appearance as Ragini who is now consigned to a mental asylum. 

Now as you know, it’s the fine tradition of horror films that when a ghost is at large, characters will wander into forests and unlit attics. In Ragini MMS 2, Rocks – on the insistence of the writer – shoots his film in the very house where Ragini and her boyfriend had met their fate. Part of the unit even sets up residence there instead of checking into a hotel.

Logic clearly should not be applied too much though to a film in which a fellow who is making a promotional video about Rocks’ film masturbates on camera in the middle of his own shoot in the haunted house (did he mean to share that footage with TV channels?) and though he’s killed there right at the start, no mention is made of him through the remaining two hours.

What follows is a film with some genuinely startling scenes and a plausible back story, but the effort to turn us on with Leone’s presence ends up diluting what could otherwise have been a solid spookfest. The lady has improved since her Bollywood debut in Jism2, but she can still barely move a muscle on her face. She’s also a rather stiff dancer, unless she’s being asked to stick her booty out at various angles. Still, she has an enviably great body plus she does a good job of one fun scene in which she fakes an orgasm in front of the entire film unit to challenge a fellow who thinks that a porn star would not have any acting abilities.

In fact, what I liked most about Ragini MMS 2 is that Leone’s character takes on anyone in the group who assumes she’s either sexually available or a non-actor simply because she’s a porn queen. The point is clearly directed at audience prejudice too. It’s another matter that the message would have been more impactful if the actor in question actually could act.

Director Bhushan Patel must also be commended for never crossing the line into sleazy territory. Although he serves up generous views of his heroine’s cleavage, the camera does not cheapen her the way it did in Jism 2. In fact, if only he and the writing team had stayed true to the effort to frighten us and if only they’d worked a little more on the strong fundamentals they gave to their paranormal angle, this could have been a much better film.

Unfortunately, like Rocks in Ragini MMS 2, Patel & Co. too seem to have been so taken in by the fact that they had an internationally famous porn star on board, that they got distracted too often from that goal. The result is that though their story has an interesting foundation, instead of developing it to the fullest extent possible, the film ends up dipping into horror clichés and Bollywood formulae towards the end. Nothing illustrates this point better than the finale in which we the audience are just emerging from being scared by the ghost’s shenanigans when, instead of allowing us to hold on to that mood, the screen bursts into the by-now-mandatory-with-the-closing-credits peppy song and dance, featuring Leone shimmying to Yo Yo Honey Singh’s tune. For the record, the songs are uniformly unremarkable.

Still, in the overall analysis, Ragini MMS 2 gets its atmospherics and most of its cast right, it is scary in places and funny elsewhere, the dialogue writing is often clever, and it is not an unintelligent film. Saahil Prem is the kind of actor who makes you curious to see what he might do with a bigger role, Sandhya Mridul is hilarious as a behenji willing to “compro” for her career, and I guess it can be safely said that few women in this world can fake an orgasm as well as Ms Leone. Ragini MMS 2 could have been better but as things stand, given the space it inhabits and the promises it makes, I enjoyed more about it than I did not.

Rating (out of five): **3/4 (stars out of 5)

CBFC Rating (India):	A
Running time:	120 minutes

Photographs courtesy: Effective Communication

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)