Rajat Kapoor and Monika Panwar’s horror-thriller digs deeper and retains you engaged – Firstpost

Forged: Monika Panwar, Rajat Kapoor, Geetanjali Kulkarni, Shilpa Shukla, Abhishek Chauhan, Chum Darang

Administrators: Pankaj Kumar and Surya Balakrishnan

Language: Hindi

One factor that the Hindi movie content material must be praised for is how the atmospherics are in a a lot better place versus the gaudiness of the previous. It’s extra concerning the meticulous women and men behind the digicam and never simply the technological development. This week on Prime Video, we have now a horror thriller referred to as Khauf that’s created and written by a woman- Smita Sen. Directed by Pankaj Kumar and Surya Balakrishnan, Khauf opens with a mysterious girl going again to her hostel when she senses somebody approaching her surreptitiously. It’s midnight, town is Delhi and never surprisingly. Khauf isn’t simply one other tackle possessed our bodies and twisted spirits. It additionally makes an attempt to throw gentle on how ladies’s security proceed to be in jeopardy.

The story then strikes to a different girl (Monika Panwar) as mysterious and unknown to the individuals round her. She too senses evils round her within the type of ghosts. As anticipated, there’s one bounce scare proper in the course of an intimate scene in a cramped room. The makers juxtapose two lives into one narrative and the story actually will get rolling when she involves the identical hostel the place the aforementioned lady felt scared for all times. No title on this style can escape the trope and tried and examined formulation. The second she lands within the hostel, she begins to expertise unusual and ghastly experiences.

The camerawork does a great job of making eerie like ambiance accompanied by bone-chilling background rating. Enter Rajat Kapoor, (doing an Ashutosh Rana from Raaz). Kapoor’s bruised and brooding aura blends properly into the tense story of Khauf. He did the identical with the underrated thriller referred to as Pari again in 2018 the place he died an alarming but amusing dying. We haven’t had too many feminine creators making an attempt this style because it’s largely dominated by the boys on the market. We’ve seen the extraordinary silences of Ram Gopal Varma’s Bhoot, we have now additionally skilled the melancholic insanity of Vikram Bhatt’s Raaz. Khauf opts for the previous. It chooses to play with silences in order that we are able to scream. Many of the horror titles have characters’ screech the place the viewers stay completely deadpan.

Additionally, after a extremely very long time we get to see ghosts dropping on the display screen anytime they need, even proper in the course of the day. Sure! It feels each rousing and refreshing. However Khauf isn’t simply a humdrum horror drama. It flirts with the concept of what it feels and takes to be a girl in 2025, the perverted world full of promiscuous males, and battling loneliness in an unknown metropolis with strangers throughout. The title has extra meanings than one. It’s not at all times the worry of the ghosts, it’s additionally the worry of loneliness and even the individuals round. Properly executed!

Score: 3 (out of 5 stars)

Khauf is now streaming on Prime Video IN