Taapsee Pannu and Gulshan Devaiah star in Ajay Bahl’s thriller about the risks of not being seen and being unable to see.
Bollywood: In our films and daily lives, the socially and physically disadvantaged are frequently invisible. Society may express the required empathy, but do we truly want to know or comprehend them? The connection is rarely one of the equals. What if one socially inept outlier develops into a psychopath, attempting to blur the line between the non-disabled and the disabled to make the world see what it prefers to ignore? Ajay Bahl’s Blurr tackles the terrifying thought through a riveting story based on the Spanish film Julia’s Eyes (2010).
Blurr is currently streaming on ZEE 5
Gayatri (Taapsee Pannu), an archaeologist residing in Delhi with her husband Neel (Gulshan Devaiah), is compelled to travel to the hills of Uttarakhand after having a nightmare about her twin sister Gautami. The police inquiry finds that she committed suicide, but Gayatri believes that her musical sister would not have taken her own life.
The psychological thriller, with horror undertones, is not for the faint of heart, and cinematographer Sudhir Chaudhary and production designer Nilesh Wagh expertly utilize the backdrop. The aspects of nature and the design of Gautami’s house, set in the hills, contribute to the dread that Bahl and co-writer Pawn Sony have envisioned on paper.
The undervalued Bahl, known for B.A. Pass and Section 375 succeeds in keeping us engaged in a twisted thriller whose purpose is to terrify us with the everyday. Here’s a thriller about a social experiment! Not all the questions are answered, and not all the gaps are filled with reasonable explanations, but Blurr keeps up to its name for the most part.
Gayatri’s increasing vision loss becomes a metaphor for a society that refuses to see the elderly and infirm in its midst. As it examines the dangers of not being seen and being unable to perceive, the narrative gradually fuzzes our conscience and stirs our imagination.
Following Dobaraa, Taapsee has starred in another tense thriller based on a Spanish film. Like Anurag Kashyap’s film, the world does not believe Gayatri’s reality, and she must navigate a psychological minefield to prove her point. Taapsee, who co-produced the picture, strikes the proper balance between the character’s strength and fragility, making the building upheaval inside Gayatri completely real.
It’s encouraging to see skilled actors Kruttika Desai and S.M. Zaheer, rarely considered by new-age casting directors, return to the screen in minor but important roles. Abhilash Thapliyal is convincing as the young man struggling with obscurity and insignificance.
The subtitling for suicide references may have been improved, and the OTT platform could have warned viewers about the triggers. However, Bahl crafts a solid thriller based on a sad societal reality.
