Continuing the disappointment in this potential genre of Hindi horror movies, PARI (co-produced by its lead star Anushka Sharma), turns out to yet another well-intentioned attempt that fails to deliver or satisfy the huge followers of the genre. Giving the credit where due, the film certainly deserves praises for intentionally willing to break a set pattern/template of Horror movies in Hindi Cinema. And has a fine edge in its technical excellence too seen in its rich atmospherics, cinematography, colour-tones, background score and sound-design backing a relatively novel concept.
However the technical excellence alone doesn’t make a worth watching horror film missing the other essential components. Such films need to pull in the viewers, getting them involved in the tension and story progression along with scaring them like hell. And that’s exactly where PARI fails to live to its minimal expectations raised, despite being a brave and novel project.
Beginning well creating an intriguing premise in its opening sequences, the debutant director Prosit Roy successfully designs a very fine looking body having the desired appeal, but remains unable to infuse life into it, resulting in a sad disappointment. The fresh concept does have engaging references of satanic cults, evil spirits, women in black robes with disfigured faces, vampire-like-animal eaters and more with a few good scares too. But it all creates so much confusion (taking too much time) in the presentation itself which never impresses in spite of all praiseworthy performances by the entire cast.
Moreover unnecessary songs and a love triangle in a horror film (involving the spirit) looks more silly than anything real or believable to be very honest. Besides this is also one of those films in which the title never represents what is being shown on the screen as a completely disconnected and mis-matching, irritating feature of the project (trying to explain the relation through its tag line).
Remaining more interested in generating a World Cinema kind of impact forgetting our own Indian audience (including much blood and gore), PARI also strongly reminds you of a similar morgue sequence seen in THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE (2016) and turns annoying towards the end in absence of any shocking disclosure or justification of its specific choice of a language/religion representing the evil practices.
In all, it’s certainly encouraging to see Anushka trying hard and going for novel concepts and experiments in her films as a brave producer-actor. But its equally disheartening to see these projects as all half-baked ones lacking the much required mass-appeal. So you can watch it only for a bold and spirited performance of Anushka Sharma alone along with Parambrata Chatterjee and Rajat Kapoor trying their level best, but don’t expect anything entertaining in terms of horror giving you a clear indication.
Rating : 2 / 5
(The article was first published at UC News Mobile App in March 2018)
Tags :
PARI Movie Review by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, Experimental Hindi Horror Film, Inspired Horror Film From the West, New Hindi Films Reviews by Bobby Sing, New Bollywood Movies Reviews By Bobby Sing.
