Bollywood star Anushka Sharma in Pari
Growing up in Calcutta, Prosit Roy had heard many ghost stories; Bengali literature has a rich body of them. But it was one of master Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray's short films, based on the short stories of celebrated Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore, that scared him stiff.
"It's from Ray's collection of three short films called Teen Kanya. It's the second film called Monihara. There are two men, sitting by the banks of a river. And one of them tells the other one a ghost story. At the end of it, the other guy says, 'It was a good story, but there were many inaccuracies.' The first guy asks, how do you know? The second guy says, 'Because I am a ghost,' and he disappears," says Roy over the phone from his Mumbai home. "When I saw that film as a kid, and that guy disappearing, I could not sleep for three nights."
Monihara isn't really a frightening film. But the build-up to the final scene and the mysterious end had Roy spooked. Now, he's ready to scare Bollywood audiences in India and abroad with his debut feature film called Pari, which is released in theatres across Canada on Friday.
Bollywood horror films are typically associated with the schlocky work of the Ramsay Brothers in the eighties, famous for sleaze and gore-filled storylines featuring haunted temples or mansions, as well as laughably low-budget monsters. Other famous Bollywood horror films have been made by Ram Gopal Varma, known for his cult classics Raat (1992) and Bhoot (2003); both films involved body possessions by the souls of wronged women. While Varma was able to rope in famous actors whose stars weren't shining so brightly when they signed up for his productions, Bollywood horror films usually recruit from a roster of relatively unknown actors.
Pari, however, stars one of Hindi cinema's top actresses, Anushka Sharma, alongside a cast of actors well regarded for their acting chops – Parambrata Chatterjee and Rajat Kapoor. Its trailer shows Sharma playing a woman with a mysterious and dark past, in complete contrast to her usual perky onscreen persona, and has her fans guessing the possible plot. However, Roy says he won't even reveal his elevator pitch.
"I can't describe it in a way without saying too much," he says. He does say that Pari is inspired by films such as The Shining, a Spanish film called The Orphanage (2007, produced by Guillermo del Toro) and The Witch (2015).
"These are all atmospheric horror films, and we wanted to explore that genre; where you scare the audience by the atmosphere, the types of shots you've used, the use of sound, proper background score. Making it eerie through elements of filmmaking, using locations or the idea of loneliness," says Roy, adding that he hasn't seen vintage Bollywood ghost films such as Mahal (1949, which was shot by German cinematographer Josef Wirsching, and launched the singing career of Bollywood's iconic playback singer Lata Mangeshkar) or Bees Saal Baad (1962).
"[Other] Indian horror films depend on two things – jump-cut scares and sex scenes. We wanted to explore more of the intrigue and suspense elements, which has been rarely explored in our [horror] films."
The original screenplay for Pari was the result of a call out for horror scripts from a Bollywood production house. Having worked his way up in Bollywood – from an intern for Aamir Khan Productions to an assistant director on projects with directors such as Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra (whose 2006 film Rang De Basanti was India's entry to the Oscars' foreign-language film category that year) and TIFF regular Vishal Bhardwaj – Roy decided to pitch his hat into the ring, and wrote a first draft with his friend Abhishek Banerjee.
"We're both horror-film buffs, so we thought we'd try our hand at it. We did it over Skype because I was in Mumbai, and Abhishek was in Kolkata [Calcutta]," says Roy. However, by the time they finished their script, the production house had abandoned the idea of making a horror film. Meanwhile Roy ended up as an assistant director on Phillauri (2017), a romantic comedy set in Punjab starring Sharma as a friendly ghost in search of her own true love. Sharma's brother, Karnesh, who runs the Indian film-production house Clean Slate Films along with Sharma, had seen Roy's short film Bloody Moustache and asked if he had any scripts in his bag. Roy sent him a copy of Pari.
"I remember we were in Patiala, it was the early days of shooting Phillauri. I could not sleep one night, and woke up early in the morning. I saw Karnesh strolling outside the hotel. I asked him how come he was up. That's when he told me that Clean Slate would make Pari," says Roy.
Shooting the film on location in Bengal over 45 days was challenging, especially since they had scouted new locations with little infrastructure support. But watching his script come alive was an unforgettable experience, says Roy.
"You can't believe it's Anushka in the film," he says of the actress better known for playing chirpy characters in films such as Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017) and Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016). "She had a difficult makeup process … we were shooting in places full of muck, inside a jungle. She became a part of the location, a part of the story. I don't know how she did that. But when an actor embraces the character like that, that too for my first film, I had a great time," he says.
For an audience unfamiliar with Bollywood, he hopes Pari is a chance to appreciate a horror film in Hindi.
"The story is a universal story, the emotions are universal," says Roy. "I hope they get to see a horror film that – I don't know – maybe adds to world cinema."