Where fear is in the mind : The Tribune India

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Movie Review — Phobia

Where fear is in the mind

By now perhaps those of you keeping tabs on the film Phobia know that it deals with agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces. And like us, you might be wondering how a director can create chills and thrills around this fear?

Where fear is in the mind

A still from Phobia



Nonika Singh

By now perhaps those of you keeping tabs on the film Phobia know that it deals with agoraphobia, the fear of open spaces.   And like us, you might be wondering how a director can create chills and thrills around this fear? After all, horror is meant to unleash in far-flung dilapidated havelis or isolated cemeteries. 

Well, here is the dope. For a start, it puts the patient, no less than an artist Mehek (Radhika Apte) suffering from the illness in a flat all by herself. Yes, indeed this conjecture in the film does seem a bit unpalatable. After all which sane person, let alone a man who cares sincerely for her, would do this to a woman on the edge of a mental breakdown.

But rest of all that happens in the film, especially the intriguing twist involving the bizarre neighbour, is more or less believable. Credibility, of course, is made possible by the doe-eyed beauty Radhika Apte. In brilliant form, she is aided well by co-actors, especially Satyadeep Mishra. Her boyfriend proves to be the perfect foil to her edgy mental state and suffering that stems from the irrational fear of going out in public.

Radhika, in fact, is so good that she exudes fear through her wide eyed stupefaction, her malleable face and her controlled as well as contrived body language. She carries the part with so much conviction that not even for a minute do you doubt her trauma and the ensuing delusions. 

Indeed, the film isn't about her illness or any other psychological mumbo jumbo. Her medical condition is merely a peg to impregnate the film with load full of scary elements. The narrative has enough wherewithals to scare you out of your wits. Even when it offers dramatic relief from horror, it takes off on an equally unpredictable tangent, no less fearsome.  

Yes, there are certain stock ingredients like broken mirrors, a missing girl, some blood and a girl in the bath-tub. But otherwise the film makes a fine departure from the regular horror stuff, both in its treatment and subject. The usual formulaic way in which horror films are made in India is shed along the way. If horror is one genre in Indian cinema that rarely gets its alchemy right, Phobia is one such film where most elements and genuine acting come together to create a spine chilling atmosphere. The director sets the spooky tone right from frame one and doesn’t let the tempo down till the credits roll. The film remains taut and tense all through and rarely loses its vice like grip on you. 

Try hard, you can’t shake off the tingling feeling going up your spine and staying right there. If you are the fainthearted, its precise length of 90 minutes might seem a trifle long. But then if you have a phobia of horror films, its best to chicken out. For aficionados of horror genre the film is a chilling and an interesting ride. 

Minus unwanted blood and gore it builds fear in the mind and through its lead actor lets it crawl all over you. And that is it's beauty…without being ghastly or ghostly it ups the fear factor to the optimum.

 By the way we love the end too. The correlation between an artist’s imagination and prophetic powers is numbingly surreal. Call it uncanny, supernatural or sixth sense…. Phobia as long as it lasts sends your senses into a stupor.

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