R.Madhavan is back & this time with a bilingual- 13 B in Hindi & Yavarum Nalam in Tamil. The movie also marks the return of Poonam Dhillon to the big screen after a long gap. One also gets to see P.C. Sreeram’s cinematography in only his 2nd ever Hindi movie & the music is by Shankar-Ehasan –Loy. Considering all these things and also the fact the movie is in the horror-thriller genre made me curious to watch the movie. Also with movies like Phoonk, 1920, Raaz- The Mystery Continues having all done well recently at the box office, the curiosity factor in my case was slightly more.
First things first Vikram Kumar the director and screen play writer loses no time in building up a premise to the plot. The movie is all about a family which consists of Madhavan, his wife ( Neetu Chandra), his brother, brother’s wife and two kids, a sister and the mother ( Poonam Dhillon). At the very beginning we see the family shifting into a new flat on the 13th floor (13 B) of the building after taking a loan. But a series of strange incidents keep happening especially with Madhavan.
The lift doesn’t seem to work for him, pictures of him taken on his mobile phone seem to be distorted, one is unable to hammer nails in the puja room, and so on. Madhavan seems to initially shrug off all these happenings and tries to get on with his routine. All the women in the house (especially the mother and her 2 daughter in laws) are fond of watching the saas- bahu serials on T.V & one day when they try to catch up on a favorite serial of theirs, they are unable to change the channels & happen to watch a new serial. What’s interesting is that the serial happens to be based on a family similar to that of theirs and the happenings in the serial seem to mirror those happening in 13 B.
One fine day Madhavan happens to notice the serial by chance & realizes the strange similarity between the serial & the situation at home.When things start getting even more bizarre, he even brings a friend, a cop (Murli Sharma) home to check the same & when he also admits to the strange similarity, things start to look all the more puzzling. So what really is the serial all about? What’s the connection between the serial & their family? Is their house haunted? What really is the secret behind all the sudden happenings? Watch the movie to find out the answers to these and many more questions.
Camera work by P.C.Sreeram really acts as one of the major highlights of the movie. The use of various color tones to suit the various moods of the film is remarkably done. Songs by S-E-L do not really work in the movie & only seem to slow down the pace of the movie. B.G.Score by Tubby-Parik is effective. In terms of acting, Madhavan is earnest as always, Neetu Chandra is decent, Poonam Dhillon as the T.V obsessed mother doesn’t get much screen time, Murli Sharma is good, Sachin Khedekar is just o.k, Dhritiman Chatterjee is good and Deepak Dobriyal in a small role impresses nevertheless. The movie for once does not have the typical blood & gore associated with Indian movies of this genre & is more of something which plays on your mind.
Considering the way one’s life nowadays has become so much dependent on the T.V & the mobile phone, the story looks quite contemporary and reasonably convincing. Yes at times the pace does drop a bit, but overall the movie is fairly earnest in what it intends to convey. Definitely a decent movie and worth a watch especially for those who like movies like The Ring (no it’s certainly not close to it in terms of brilliance though).
Originally published in PFC- check it out here- http://passionforcinema.com/13-b-beware-of-the-television/
No comments:
Post a Comment