MOVIE REVIEW
Movie Review :
Phobia
A
'horror' film with a marked difference, Phobia
juggles with familiar elements of the genre - fear,
shock, surprise, mystery - with a steady sense of
thematic purpose. Pavan Kirpalani's third directorial venture (after Ragini MMS and Darr @ the Mall) is spinechilling enough not to call too much attention to its inherent whimsicalities and the attendant slip-ups. Whatever
flaws there are in the film - and there are many for sure
- are offset by a riveting performance by Radhika Apte
as a successful painter who has more than just the ravages of a psychological disorder to contend with. A sexual assault survivor, the film's female protagonist is an
independent-spirited artist Mehek Deo who is trapped
and terrorized by sounds and apparitions in a high-rise
apartment. She is unable to leave this constricted,
terror-inducing space because she is petrified of stepping out into the open. Even hauling the garbage bags
across the landing to the bin at the end of the passage
is a chore that reduces Mehek to a wreck. The dimly-lit
interiors of the flat hold a slew of horrors - blood-curdling
sounds emanate from its walls, lights crackle and flicker
ominously, a severed finger shows up in the freezer, and
a bloodied body crawls out of the bathtub, among other
unspeakable things.
With these basic narrative pieces in place, the director
builds a nerve wracking drama that probes an agoraphobic woman's fightback in the face of grave mental
and emotional stress. Phobia is a taut and evocatively
filmed psychological thriller about a woman whose mind
plays terrible tricks on her, but it is equally about the
hostile, predatory world that she is a part of and feels
threatened by. So her battle with the demons within mirror her fight with the ones that haunt her outside. Mehek
believes that the house she lives in is the site where the
previous occupant, another woman, was murdered and
she suspects the mysterious giggly, wide-eyed architect
next door, Mannu (Ankur Vikal) of perpetrating that heinous crime. Late in the second half, the protagonist,
her baffled boyfriend Shaan (Satyadeep Mishra) and
a chirpy young neighbour Nikki (Yashashvini Dayama)
get together to perform a séance in order to summon
the spirit that they think is hovering over the house. Kirpalani does well not to turn Phobia to a maze of pseudoreligious mumbo-jumbo, preferring instead to keep the
drama boiling within the realms of pop psychology. One
might dismiss some of the plot premises as too conveniently simplistic, but the context that Phobia creates for
the heroine's unstable state of mind ties in perfectly with
her fierce distrust of men as a tribe. There is a reference
in the plot - it comes from Mehek's elder sister Anusha
(Nivedita Bhattacharya) - to a fall that she suffered as
a child from the first floor of a building. That leads to
a question: is that blow to the head acting up now and
pushing her into a dark abyss that neither she nor her
shrink can fathom? But that aspect of the tale is quickly
swept into the background as a more traumatic experience during a taxi ride rattles Mehek. It leaves a scar
on her soul that refuses to go away. There are parts
of the film that are left unexplained. Among them is the
pivotal bit about the heroine's psychic powers that enable her to see what lies ahead in the immediate 'future'.
The climax of Phobia, which unfolds in the course of a
long Diwali night, hinges on this ability of the protagonist and it might have helped the film's cause had there
been a more logical basis for it. Be that as it may, Phobia is a genuinely scary film. This despite the fact that
it is neither about malevolent ghosts out for vengeance
nor about the destructive undead on a rampage. Phobia
opens with an art exhibition where Mehek Deo's paintings are on display. The film ends with a freeze frame
of a particular painting that is revealed to the audience
at the very outset. This artwork serves as the opening
and closing brackets within which the protagonist's harrowing tale is condensed - it provides the film's thematic
bedrock and raises it way above the level of an average
scarefest. Phobia wouldn't be half the film it is without
the mercurial Radhika Apte. Watching her on the screen
as emotions flash across her visage is an unalloyed delight. For the most part, the film is hers alone, and the
camera revels in capturing the character's innermost
feelings on her malleable face and expressive eyes. It
is like being witness to a solo pantomime act in which
a world of sensations is conveyed without a word being
uttered. Phobia is a canny flick that places known genre
conventions in fresh light, the kind that bestows new life
on them. Watch this film for the many surprises it springs
and, of course, for Radhika Apte in full flow.
30 | BOOM