Review of "Hereditary"

Hereditary comes across a movie which should be on your list if you are a Horror movie lover. I am writing this piece so you know already that I love horror movies a lot. To put into perspective, I have already watched 55 from Top 100 horror movies list from IMDB which would be close to 5500 hours of my life. 😀

Getting back to the movie, I watched this 2018 movie on Prime Video recently and it was really good in terms of concealing the antagonist or the demon in this case. Just after finishing the movie, I felt that I had watched an amalgamation of the “Wicker Man”, The Holy Mountain and a tincture of “The Shining”. If you read about those movies or watch them, you will realise what I am talking about.

I want to talk about the BEST parts in the movie which are really good and worth mentioning.

The SOUND DESIGN - Oh! I love the Sound Design in this movie. Very few horror movies bring out the right music to compliment the scenes of the movies. Lewis Goldstein and Tom Ryan have done a splendid job on this project. The sound design is eerie, contemporary, tribal and creepy, all at the same time. I really enjoyed it on the IEMs I used to watch the movie.

The SCRIPT - A very novel approach to horror movie making by mixing a lot of ingredients like paganism, slasher effects, brute force and dreams/nightmares. The unpredictability of people being killed is an icing on the cake and adds a modern and novel approach. There are occasions where the script brings out the emotional part of the characters within a family in a brutal way which is justified by the actors with all its merit. Bonus points on the miniature art concept and connecting it to real life. A scene which shows how the mother laments the death of her child by re-creating the miniature version of her accident, must be a brain child of a genius and vastly experienced writer. The suspense of hiding the main antagonist is also brilliant and the scriptwriter has done a tremendous job here.

The ACTING - All the Actors are Fantabulous. I think this is the first movie of Toni Collette which I have seen and I am already a Fan. She delivers emotions on the screen like a rainbow formed with mercury, transitioning effortlessly from one emotion to the other. Gabriel Brianne and Alex Wolf have been tremendous. This movie must have re-defined Alex’s career and he is on his way to do much larger projects. But one actor whose name I don’t know creates an impact in just one scene with his gaze (pictured below). Although, he comes for another single scene later in the movie too.

The EDITING, COLOR GRADING, SFX and all major aspects of filmmaking are top notch. They keep the audience hooked with the streamlined storytelling.

Needless to say, there are blips which they should have looked at. The VFX at places seems very outdated. For example, the scene when Annie’s jacket catches fire, the fire seems fake to normal eyes. Some decapitation scenes and bodies look glaringly artificial. Color grading at some places during the climax is too dark. They show a lot of symbols in the movie but there is almost no explanation of them. They seem purely referential which in a way shows that the director wants people to make assumptions. They don’t mention how the actual possession happened, only the means are shown. Probably, that can be an inspiration for another movie 😀

Overall, I really enjoyed the movie and it is definitely part of my all time horror movies to watch out for. After the movie, I tried to recall which movie might have been the creepiest I saw and the immediate answer was “Rosemary’s Baby”. Again, that is purely a personal choice and it won’t be fair to limit my answer to just one movie.

"Killer Soup" Review

Image Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_Soup

"It is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sounds and fury, signifying nothing." That's how the whole series ends.

How many times has a director been honest in summing up a story in one line at the end of the story. This is one such instance with the director feeding up a coagulated plot to the audience and summarizing the pain to the audience at the culmination of the story.

This review will be short and would save you the pain of dangling between ill placed cuss words and predictable sub plots which have been given the shape of accidents rather than intended homicide.

I was really disappointed with the plot and probably the writing. I have huge respect for people who write screenplay and stories and this in no way demeans the effort of writers of this one too. But I felt, that there has been a lot of patchwork in this story.  Good editing has been able to streamline the story and bring some sense but overall the audience feels like they have landed in no man's land.

The performance of all the actors is really good (of course they are very good professionals) but the real let down happens on the writing part.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

I mean one of the protagonists, Prabhakar, died in the initial part of the story and is replaced by an impostor and none of his near and dear ones have an inkling that he is not the same guy. NOT EVEN ONE. Really? Although I am not a professional writer but I feel that for a thriller to work well, the sense of doubt and confusion is the biggest weapon. One of the old Hindi movies, Baazigar, camouflaged it very well and had that tincture of confusion all the time. Although the audience knew the culprit but the story still kept the audience engaged and hooked.

The role of Arvind Shetty played by Sayaji Shinde looked all the over the place. I really couldn't make any sense of it. A dominant businessman in whole of Tamil Nadu doesn't seems dominating enough. There are not enough extras around him to show his power and his appearances felt very weak. His last words while dying is a WTF moment and is a testimony of the weak writing. Probably, this character is the weakest character and should have been used more aptly.

This series feels like it belongs to Konkana Sen. Heavily dominated by her presence and the story revolves around her character in many ways. But her character is confusing as well. She has a dream of getting her own restaurant and to get that she involves herself in multiple murders and insane situations. Her character is really mean and bitchy and reminds me of Lena Headley's performance in GoT. Sometimes I felt she is like the shrewd Mom in Law from yester years who would go to any length to torture the daughter in laws. A completely non-compromising selfish antagonist vouching for a dream and cooking "Paya killer soup" for all and sundry.

I dunno what to say about Inspector Hassan's character played by Nasser. An investigation officer who is laid back to start with but becomes curious in a case after the loss of a bright officer in the case. He hallucinates all the time about the officer giving him clues every now and then. A great addition to the plot would have been that Hassan was always high on mushrooms. Would have been logical and creatively connected to the plot too.

There are many many bloopers and everything doesn't add up to be a cohesive plot. I am sure the writing would have been reviewed by so many people and many stalwarts but I don't know how people were convinced on the same.

But I really liked the technicalities and performances. Almost everyone has justified their part and nothing more can be asked from the BTS team as well.

Two standout creative approaches in the series has been -

1. Intermingling of Tamil and Hindi languages and trying to bridge the divide. Perhaps, a series gives more opportunities to do the same and cater to larger audience.  But this is important and really helps in improving and tailoring the minds of people watching the series.

2. The hallucinating character of Inspector Thuppali with a raincoat and persistent rainfall on him. A very creative approach to show how manifestations stick to people's mind in a particular way.

All in all, I really wanted to SOUP to play a more dominant role. Soup seems more notional and points to the "RAITA" in the family and of course the PLOT. The main character, SOUP, should have had more part to play but keeps begging for its place. As per the series, it is definitely DARK but not sure about COMEDY.

PS: This is just a small review of this series I saw. This is completely my independent opinion and outpour on the series. I really respect the effort people put in creating their vision into reality. I apologize if anything in this review causes concern or demeans anyone.

I wrote this small comment on Manoj Bajpayee sir's instagram as a very short review to bring out the comedy in the soup.

The evergreen 'Dear Father'

I remember those days of the 90s when I was a teen and I developed interest in watching multilingual movies. During those days, Doordarshan used to run a regional language movie every Sunday from 2-5PM and this was available pan India. I have been watching movies in different languages since that time. This context is important as in today’s India language is no more relevant and with Internet and OTT available everywhere, the viewer can choose to watch what he wants.

Back to the point. I watched a Gujarati movie recently called ‘Dear Father’. I became a fan of Chetan Dhanani after watching the movie ‘Reva’ and I was looking forward to watching this movie. I was deeply impressed by his acting in Reva and I knew his performance would be impeccable in this one too.

The movie is about a small household of three people - father, son and daughter-in-law. A family where all the three members have different priorities in life and have a different perspective.  The movie starts with a scene where the father has fallen from the flat in the apartment and has been seriously injured and admitted to the hospital. Subsequently, a police investigation starts into the incident and Paresh Rawal sir (who is playing dual roles of the father and the investigating officer) takes over the investigation of the incident.

I am not going to spill over the beans on how the movie moves forward but I would definitely like to mention a few aspects about the movie. The performances of all the actors are fabulous and top notch. I couldn’t stop myself getting flashbacks to Paresh sir’s many more previous movies like Hera Pheri but he has excelled in the role of this typical Gujarati dad. There were a few scenes in the movie which are hilarious and thought provoking as well. The father-son banter over the 25 years of nagging with the females of the family is so indigenously Indian. The dialogues seem to come directly from the Indian homes. When I say Indian, I mean all parts of India. I have seen these kinds of similar issues in a Kannada family, a Telugu family, a Marwadi family and so on and so forth.

Chetan has been impeccable yet again with his performance. I think his strength is depicting emotions with versatility and owning the character. The character in Reva and the character in Dear Father are very different but you will realise that he fits right in. In the movie, he is the average husband who is getting pulled between his parents and his wife. Needless to say, this is the story of almost every husband in India. Trying to appease the parents and the wife is a mundane attempt all husbands make and fail. Chetan has clearly justified the role and fits right in.

The actress Manasi reminded me of so many Marwadi ladies in my family. The dichotomy of their lives to match the expectations of the family and also try to achieve their dreams. Manasi has nailed the role and the way she has portrayed the frustration of a contemporary Indian woman leaves an indelible mark on the audience.

I would like to appreciate the script and dialogue writers (Vivek Bele, Uttam Gada) of this movie. They have great insights into how Indian families run in today’s world. They have been able to bring out the originality of life in the script. How a major incident in the family connects the family back again. How a frustrated police officer relates himself to a case which he is investigating. The whole story has been intertwined in a lovely braid.

I had a couple of qualms from the movie which I would like to highlight. Since this was a traditional homely setup, I was quite surprised that the husband and wife scenes visiting their injured father was not shown quite often if it didn’t feel like they were too much concerned. The police officer role of Paresh sir approached very casually to the husband and wife, anytime and everytime. For example, in one scene, he entered their home without the permission of the family. But I guess, the writers can take the liberty of some creative freedom to connect the dots.

Overall I really enjoyed the movie. I kept that one minute scene between the father and son as my whatsapp status and I got so many replies from people asking for the name of the movie. So, do you see, language is not a barrier anymore. This movie took me back to the Malayalam movie “Android Kunjappan 2.0”, I watched last year. Funny how they are connected in subtle ways. They both evoke the right chords of connecting with your father and all the actors in both movies have done so much justice.

Thanks to OTT platforms, I think we will see a future envisioned by Chanakya of a unified Bharatvarsh.

Anand Bora

Dedh Ishqiya is one and half spoon headache

Over time we go into theaters to watch movies which should entertain as well as enlighten us. Many of us spend lots of money for watching these movies. The spectators expect a honest and entertaining movie to digress from the daily tensions of life. I went to the movie theater yesterday expecting the same.

This movie is a sequel to a movie named ‘Ishqiya’ which was a landmark movie encompassing ‘cheating’ and ‘treachery’ with an umbrella of stellar performances by Naseeruddin Shah, Arshad Warsi and Vidya Balan. It had a decent story line packed with dialogues in crude language of Uttar Pradesh. Needless to say it was a success at the box office.

Coming to the sequel, the movie is perilously slow in the first half. We are not able to get the thick and thin of the story as something seems wrongly placed in the initial part. The necklace which is stolen doesn’t really have any meaning in the whole story even though the writer tries hard to introduce some meaning to it. The movie wriggles in between when the poetry competition is being shown. This should have been fast paced and a bit of humor should have been introduced.

The second half tries to create a plot of kidnapping which again is ruthlessly marred and misses common sense. It seems more humorous than tragic. The climax seems to be derived from a few Hollywood flicks. You can easily make out a Tarantino style of portrayal in the scene. The action scenes are very similar to the ones shown in Desperado. Also, I must admit that there are few scenes which have been inspired by other movies. For instance, the one scene when Huma Qureshi runs to hug Madhuri, Arshad expects that she’ll hug him but as it turns out she goes behind him and hugs Madhuri. I saw this enactment in the Tamil movie Boys which released in 2003.

Legendary actors like Naseeruddin Shah and Madhuri Dixit have been their self in the movie and have given power packed performances. Arshad Warsi plays the vagabond thief but it seems that his potential has been under used. Huma Qureshi has come of age but her role in this movie is very similar to the one she played in ‘The Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2’. Vijay Raaz is good but still lacks the impact he used to create in his earlier movies.

A lot of native profane language has been used in the dialogues but they don’t create an impact and the storyline is unimpressive. A similar movie made by Vishal Bharadwaj in the backdrops of Uttar Pradesh was ‘Omkara’ which derived its story from The Othello is still appreciated even though it had similar kind of dialogues. I liked the use of Urdu language in this movie but better movies have been made which have used the language in more beautiful manner.

The good part in the movie is cinematography. Appropriate lights have been used and give the movie a periodic feel. Editing has been pristine and one can’t easily find glitches. Choreography of Birju Maharaj deserves respect and Madhuri has done justice to the same. Music is impressive as it has always been with Vishal Bharadwaj’s movies.

Overall, I was disappointed with the movie as I expect a decent story with Vishal Bharadwaj’s movies. I think he should get back to making movies based on Shakespeare’s literary works. I hope he is not working on a two and half spoon headache now.

Anand Bora