Pizza: A review

Garcon, this is not what I ordered.

 After all the running around last week, and viewing a slew of foreign films at the Biffes, I decided to settle down with something homegrown. I picked a film that I had somehow missed on its cinematic release, “Pizza”. This thriller/horror, was a huge indie hit in 2012. It was the film that established director Karthik Subbaraj, and actor (and current indie superstar) Vijay Sethupathi, as artists to watch out for.

I’d watched Karthik’s brilliant “Jigarthanda” on its release, and loved it. That was a quintessential Tamil gangster film that also wore its influences on its sleeve. What I really admired about it was that when the current crop of Tamil and other Indian language films are trying and failing miserable to ape Hollywood crime flicks - with globetrotting dons and imbecilic storylines - “Jigarthanda” went back to the roots, and was a stylish gangster film rooted in Tamil (and Indian-ness), without insulting the audience’s intelligence.

As mentioned earlier, I’d missed out on watching “Pizza” due to combination of various factors. In the meantime, the film had been hyped up tremendously by the media, friends, acquaintances etc. This combined with the fact that I really liked “Jigarthanda” and wanted to watch Karthik’s earlier output, made me jump at the opportunity to watch “Pizza” when it presented itself. 

I started watching the film alone, at around 11 in the night, in a darkened room. The perfect setting. I must hand it to Karthik, parts of the film were genuinely unnerving, there is a large portion of the film that takes place inside a bungalow, with just Vijay Sethupathi (I’m a sucker for films – or atleast large extended portions of it – which are one-man shows, set in confined locations). In such cases, it’s hard to hold the audience’s interest and move the story forward. However, the “Pizza” team have pulled it off.

Michael (played by Vijay) is a pizza delivery guy at a restaurant. He is in a live-in relationship with his girlfriend, Anu, who’s a horror buff. She’s a huge fan of horror films, books, shows and even claims to have had a paranormal experience herself. This is in direct contrast to Michael, who is not really sure if he believes in these things, and is also a bit faint of heart. As the story progresses we learn that they are orphans and have known each other since school. We also learn that Anu is pregnant, and wants to get married soon. Michael is hesitant as he’s not really convinced if he would be able to provide for them with his meagre salary. He soon comes around and they marry, privately for the time being, with Michael promising a grander wedding once they have the money.

The film then introduces us to Michael’s workplace. We meet his colleagues, the cashier – Raghavan, and the chef – Srinath. We also meet his boss, Shanmugam, who’s shown talking agitatedly about some mystery product over the phone. Shanmugam also piques Michael’s and his colleagues’ curiosity by inviting a dishevelled, homeless looking man into his office.

It turns out that Shanmugam has hired the man - a medium/exorcist of some sort – to rid his daughter of a spirit that he believes has possessed her. Michael becomes aware of this when he goes to Shanmugam’s home to drop something off, as requested. Once there, he witnesses the “possession”, as well as the medium attempting to talk to the spirit.

The film keeps moving at a brisk pace. Shortly, Michael gets a pizza delivery order, just as he’s about to leave, Shanmugam calls him inside his cabin and orders him to deliver something to his home on the way.

Michael leaves for the delivery. The next scene cuts to Shanmugam arriving back at the restaurant to find Michael bruised, bloodied and in a state of shock, sitting on the restaurant floor. His colleagues from the restaurant seem to be in a similar state as well.

On being prodded by Shanmugam, Michael breaks down and narrates the tale of what happened once he left for the delivery.

The delivery was to an affluent bungalow (the same bungalow mentioned earlier in the article). Once there, Michael witnesses two murders, a child’s un-dead spirit (the same one believed to be possessing Shanmugam’s daughter), and numerous other paranormal activities. This includes an unconnected landline telephone that suddenly comes to life and starts forwarding calls that were originally meant for Michael’s mobile.

 We also soon learn that the bungalow is actually a dilapidated old structure, with a reputation for being haunted. It was also the scene of numerous unexplained deaths. There is also a twist - Michael’s wife is also supposed to have died in the same premise a while back.

The parts mentioned above, and the opening sequences set the story moving along nicely. I started wondering whether I’d stumbled upon that elusive holy grail – an Indian horror film that would actually turn out to be intelligent and genuinely scary, because let’s face it, where horror is concerned, our films are infantile and cringeworthy.

I cycled through various theories ranging from whether the whole premise was a prank being played on Michael by his wife and colleagues (as he’s a faint hearted guy who scares easily), to whether he was hallucinating the whole thing - as a form of coping with the fact that his wife might have actually committed suicide a few scenes earlier, to time warps, and other fantastic guesses.

In the end, all the theories turned to damp squibs. It turns out that Michael and his wife had concocted this story as an elaborate scheme to dupe Shanmugam. What actually transpires is that when Michael leaves for the delivery that fateful night, he accidentally stumbles upon the “something” that Shanmugam had asked him to drop off at his house. That “something” is also the mystery product from the earlier scenes – priceless gems. Just what Michael and his wife need to make a new life for themselves and their baby. They hatch this grandiose scheme to fool Shanmugam, playing his own beliefs and superstitions against him, and thus procure the gems for themselves.

I personally felt that this film was a disappointment. It could have been so much more.

My main problem with it is the fact that the film would have worked a lot better if Karthik had actually shown Michael narrating the happenings in the bungalow and then gave us the big reveal, rather than showing what he experienced in a flashback-mode, with a lot of visual trickery, as if it were real. That would have made the film intellectually honest as well as make it a seamless whole (But I guess that wouldn’t have had quite the visceral impact the director wanted, and instead he settled for the easy way out).

I get that we, the audience, are listening to Michael tell the story, and we are as much in the dark and as taken in as Shanmugam. However the means of telling and employing a certain device to tell that story rings false to me. If Karthik had chosen to go the other way (of showing Michael narrating the story, instead of showing it via flashback), we would have had an extremely intelligent, “talky” thriller with horror elements, comparable with the best in the world. To me, the version he decided to go with feels like a cop-out and rings false.

I didn’t even mind the ending where paranormal incidents are suddenly introduced after it was established that there was actually nothing spooky going on. I do however mind uninspired trickery.

This film felt like I had ordered a plain margherita, and instead, got a pepperoni pizza.

I was left feeling disappointed with this film. However, I do have high hopes for Tamil (and maybe Indian horror) a few years down the road.  Although, there are large logic holes in our horror flicks, “Pizza” and “Maya” (released in 2015) show that filmmakers are focusing on atmospherics, pacing and a more mature way of presentation, rather than juvenile Ramsay Bros. type of crap that Indian horror was synonymous with in the past.