Twin Troubles:
A woman who has lost her sight commits suicide, but her twin Gayatri (Taapsee Pannu), is not convinced that her sister Gautami was depressed and killed herself. With her sight fading too, due to the same degenerative disease, Gayatri is insistent on investigating, despite protests from her husband, Neel (Gulshan Devaiah), and the local cop (Sumit Nijhawan) not finding any trace of foul play. Pannu has co-produced Blurr, based on Guillem Morales’s Spanish thriller, Los Ojos De Julia (Julia’s Eyes-2010) which must have attracted her because she is there in almost every frame of the film, and gets to portray a range of emotions. Interestingly, the original was co-written by Oriol Paulo, whose own films, The Invisible Guest and Mirage have been remade in as Badla and Dobaara (both starring Pannu). It would appear that his twisty thrillers appeal to Hindi filmmakers.
Blurr (On ZEE5), directed by Ajay Bahl, recreates the dark and spooky atmosphere in which the story unfolds, and as Gayatri struggles with her sight, the visuals seen from her point of view look nightmarish. She is convinced that a man is following her, possibly Gautami’s boyfriend, about whom she discovers in conversations with others. But only she can see this phantom stalker. Her stubbornness, and her frequent seizures, exasperate Neel, but he is also keeping secrets from her.
As she digs in, she discovers startling things about her sister, and the man whom people have seen but cannot remember. Gayatri gets increasingly disoriented as her sight gets worse, and there are strange goings on around her, which nobody believes.
Shot (by Sudhir Chaudhary) to maintain an underlit and gloomy atmosphere—not a good idea for a film meant to be seen on the small screen—Bahl, with the help of a suitably distressed Pannu-in-peril, keeps up the suspense till the end. It does turn out to be absurd—needless to add it connects with the women’s blindness.
Taapsee Pannu is at the centre, in this scream queen vs psychopath flick, but the supporting actors like Devaiah, Kritika Desai Khan and Abhilash Thapliyal do their bit with sincerity.
Maybe not a terribly exciting choice of film to remake, but then the OTT space offers something for every taste.
(This piece first appeared in seniorstoday.in)
