Pari Review: Anushka Sharma-starrer is Low on Chills and Short of Thrills Planning to watch Pari this w

It is a fact that Bollywood’s horror genre rarely ventures beyond rattling windows, creaking doors, thunder, lightning, rain, desi supernatural activities and chants except for one or two films. Prosit Roy’s Pari: Not A Fairytale tries to move away from all that but succumbs to the clichés soon enough and fails to deliver a spine-chilling experience. It actually ends up as a thriller of sorts.

A Bengali family is driving home on a rainy day after meeting a prospective bride. Arnab (Parambrata Chatterjee) is sitting on the passenger seat while his father is driving when they accidentally run over a burkha-clad woman. Rukhsana (Anushka Sharma) is a strange — pale-faced and more scared than scary — girl who they find in a chained state in a forested area while they start investigating about the woman.

While the case is dismissed as a suicide, Arnab, out of guilt perhaps, helps Rukhsana in paying off the bills and taking custody of her mother’s body from the morgue. It is during these scenes that two disparate genres—love story and horror—are weaved into the same frame. Meanwhile, a suspicious man with a damaged eye (Rajat Kapoor), is strolling somewhere outside India with a bunch of armed men.

It is commendable that the makers try to base the film’s horror on a proper story, unlike other Bollywood products but it spends too much time laying and then joining the dots, and not living up to the anticipation thereon. So while the first half intrigues, despite its slow pace, the second quickly falls apart and turns into an explainer. The talk of yesteryear events in Bangladesh are laid here and there, but are hardly enough to keep it together without a solid base.