Blurr: Taapsee Pannu stars in a blurrdy, thrilling, slasher film

Normally fear is the key in suspense thrillers. In _Blurr_ (the two ‘r’s are a hint of the twins roles played by Taapsee Pannu ), key is the fear. An unidentified key is a major fear factor in this heart-in-the mouth thriller. Seductively designed and ruminative in its homicidal thrusts, _Blurr_ is like a citadel of whispering corridors ,a tomb of doom designed to befog and bewilder our senses. Blurr begins and ends with a suicide. What comes in-between is not always convincing. But the dithering plot points don’t shake down the suspense factor. Apart from the protagonist’s vision, there is nothing blurred about Blurr. Sneaking into the Spanish original (Julia’s Eyes) writers Ajay Bahl and Pawan Soni move into the dark world of sightlessness and murder with a chilling fluidity that is never a challenge to the original, and yet an entirely new experience, removed from the Spanish film. Taapsee Pannu in a role that does not require her to save her gender, plays a strong but near-blind woman who must uncover the secret behind her twin sister’s murder. Unlike the other Spanish adaptation that Tapsee did earlier (Badla), the beauty of the suspense thriller lies not in amplifying the complications but whittling them down piece by piece until we come midpoint in the narration. This is where the real killer of a thriller kicks in. Director Ajay Bahl is in fairly sound control of the slippery goings-on. The signal for the upbeat movement in the plot is the arrival of the character played by the brilliant Abhilash Thapliyal. This actor is also seen as Pavail Gulati’s alcoholic brother in the web-series _Faadu A Love Story_ this week. Watch out for him in the years to come. He will blow your mind in ways that you would never expect. To give away more of Thapliyal’s role would be to give away the suspense. Suffice it to say that the razor sharp interactions between Thapliyal and Pannu are the life and blood of the sinewy narrative. The frames are saturated in an exquisite blue-tinged palate which spreads out from the snowcapped exteriors into the bedraggled interiors. Sudhir K Chaudhary’s cinematography speaks to us. It tells us not to trust the surface tension. The elegant visuals secrete dark areas that are faithful to the plot’s big secrets without burdening the audience with diversionary tactics. Not all of the film works with equal rigour. I found the first 45 minutes of the narrative loose-limbed and sometimes hard to digest. For example, why would one twin sister leave the other one to her own devices knowing her precarious condition? Gulshan Devaiah as the kind considerate supportive husband has little to do, and even then he is saddled with an absurd extra-marital angle. Taapsee plays her grieving twin sister’s role as a blend of Kajol in Dushman and Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. Not that I am comparing her with the two. This film doesn’t aim to more than a well-crafted slasher thriller. In that endeavour it succeeds. I never thought I would say this about any post-pandemic release. But Blurr actually belongs on the big screen. Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.