Blurr movie review: The hills are alive – and chilling – with a terrific Taapsee Pannu

Language: Hindi 

Cast: Taapsee Pannu, Gulshan Devaiah, Sumit Nijhawan, Abhilash Thapliyal, Krutika Desai Khan, S.M. Zaheer

Director: Ajay Bahl

Psychology, a hint of the paranormal and Taapsee Pannu form a solid partnership in Blurr, a new Hindi thriller set in the mountains of Uttarakhand.

The title is drawn from a degenerative condition of the eyes that Gayatri (Taapsee) and her twin Gautami (also Taapsee) suffer from. Apart from their genes, the two youngsters share a mental connection that exacerbates the trauma resulting from their declining vision.

Gayatri, an anthropologist, is the protagonist of Blurr. Distressed by a nightmare, she travels with her husband (Gulshan Devaiah) to check on Gautami, a musician who has been staying away from the public eye while awaiting an eye surgery. Gayatri arrives at her destination to find her sister dead of causes that are not obvious.

As Gayatri grieves, she also wrestles with the tension in her marriage and worries regarding her own eyesight, discovers Gautami’s creepy neighbour and a mysterious girl lurking in the background, meets an eccentric woman who grumbles about Gautami and others who gossip, detects a shadowy stalker and hears stories of a stranger swirling about in the mists.

Blurr is a remake of the acclaimed Spanish film Los ojos de Julia a.k.a. Julia’s Eyes written by Guillem Morales and Oriol Paulo, directed by the former and produced, among others, by Oscar winner Guillermo del Toro. The Hindi version is written by Pawan Sony and Ajay Bahl. The latter, also the director, is known best for B.A. Pass. Manish Pradhan is the editor. Blurr marks Taapsee’s debut as a producer.

Blurr gets its atmospherics right from the start. A grey-dominated colour palette and ominous interiors of gorgeous old buildings in the countryside (artfully arranged by production designer Nilesh Wagh) are teamed with DoP Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary’s dramatically changing vantage points to play intriguing, increasingly frightening mind games with the viewer. The camera shifts from being an observer of the scenario in its entirety to an observer primarily of Gayatri. This change complements the film’s observations about seen vs unseen members of society, the ones ignored vs the ones the world is drawn to, and even those that Gayatri herself does not realise she, in a sense, fails to see. A chill pervades the screen from the moment it opens on Gayatri’s bad dream; and is further enhanced by the altered framing later in the film.

There is violence in Blurr, but not of the in-your face, gratuitously filmed variety. The worst of it occurs off camera, and shots of the victims are not sensationalist. Nor is Shah Shahaab Alam’s sound design and Ketan Sodha’s background score. It is a measure of the director’s skill that he nevertheless manages to shock by successfully conveying the extent of the gruesomeness. This is matched by the dread he builds up in the run-up to these acts.

The larger message Blurr is aiming at gives it an interesting additional layer, even though it is not fully realised. The film’s spectrum of unseen humans includes a shy child who is deemed odd, the elderly who are disregarded and a lonely spouse. The screenplay prods us to notice them and view them with consideration. Its gaze on a bitter, once-popular artiste is less clear – she is decidedly unlikeable and is not written to invite empathy. As for the choice of the story’s central unseen figure, the manner in which his looks are unveiled made me wonder about Team Blurr’s own bias while defining good looks in our colourist society.

The subliminal messaging of an episode involving blind women is also a confusing contrast to the rest of Blurr. It comes in a spooky, terrifying scene, the effectiveness of which on that front should not divert attention from its worrying approach to the women’s disability. Gayatri and Gautami’s diminishing sight is treated with compassion, unlike these women’s sightlessness that is given a sinister air, and used as a device to terrorise both Gayatri and the audience.

That said, Blurr is never less than eerie and scary. Of course, as with all scary movies, characters in this one do things that you want to scream at them for doing because as a viewer it is obvious that horrible things will happen to them if, let’s say hypothetically, they enter that forest / get into that bathtub / open that door / return to that home alone, but they do it anyway. This is one of the hazards of watching horror flicks, so if you are driven by a masochistic desire to be afraid, then don’t spoil it for yourself by asking why when Gayatri does one of the above (I won’t tell you what).

Taapsee’s engrossing performance as Gayatri captures her bewilderment and determination, courage and fear in equal measure. The actor gets to the heart of this young woman and gets a viewer to feel for her.

She gets the bulk of the film’s screen time, but the supporting players too are nicely written, with each one examined sufficiently by the screenplay to make them rememberable. And the cast knows how to hold back just enough to steer clear of being melodramatic in already dramatic situations. Watch the lovely Gulshan Devaiah in that fleeting second when he glances at a photograph of Gayatri and Gautami.

The pandemic has been a time of exasperation with the Hindi film industry for routinely turning to other film industries across India and abroad for story ideas, including some rather insipid ones unworthy of being revisited. In a choice between an original story and a remake, I’ll still vote for an original, but setting aside that issue with the industry as a whole, Blurr is a thoroughly satisfying viewing experience.

Rating: 3 (out of 5 stars) 

Blurr is streaming on Zee5

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial

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