When Karthik Subbaraj’s Pizza released, it took everyone by surprise. It had employed a lot of popular horror devices only to deceive and pull the rug from under your feet. It was a pretty perfect script except for a small little loophole — nobody dared to verify if the villa was really haunted or not.
Akshay Akkineni’s slick and mostly faithful remake, produced by Bejoy Nambiar, is constructed almost to address those little holes, with explanations spelt out a little more than necessary and is quite engaging even if you have already seen the Tamil original and know the twists coming your way.
It’s never easy to tell a horror story with one man stuck in a villa with just a torch for the entire midsection of the film.
More so, if your lead is raw. Akshay Oberoi tries sincerely but just doesn’t seem to fit the part. His performance when he’s supposed to be scared — which is half the length of the film — is simply inconsistent. No visible graph of fear or feeling.
While Vijay Sethupathi played the whole fear factor for laughs with his comic timing, Akshay plays it straight and serious. A horror film should never try to take itself seriously and Pizza is guilty of that. So we do lose out on a few laughs.
Thankfully though, after a while you get used to this Neil Nitin Mukesh brand of woodwork and settle into the spook fest.
Parvathy Omanakuttan is a natural, definitely an actress to watch out for. At no point does she seem like she’s acting. Even the usually weak Arunoday Singh manages to make an impression here because he’s having fun.
K’s background score and the songs (Mickey McCleary, Saurabh Kalsi, Shamir Tandon) add to the atmospherics. The jazzy ‘Thehar Ja’ is the pick of the lot. Technically too, this is a sound film. The debut director surely knows his craft.
If you haven’t seen the original, here’s your chance to make amends. Even otherwise, it’s a guilty pleasure.
