by Have you ever sat down, watched a movie, and then by the end asked yourself “what exactly was that?” That’s how I felt about Akshay Akkineni’s horror suspense Pizza, but there were a few more expletives in my inner monologue. To be honest I found this one on Netflix and thought the premise sounded interesting enough; a horror film about a pizza delivery guy who encounters ghosts and other spooky stuff at a standard drop off. What I didn’t realize is that this is a Bollywood film, and the first one of its kind that I’ve ever seen. I’ve always had a genuine curiosity and I guess Pizza was as good a place as any to start. Does this horror film have what it takes to win over international audiences? Unfortunately I don’t think so; it’s not that I didn’t like it rather the format was a bit odd for me which made the story less interesting overall.
Pizza, as I mentioned earlier, is a horror film that centers around a delivery boy. Our protagonist Kunal is happy in life with his girlfriend Nikita and has big plans to move up in the business to manager one day. His only friends work at the same pie parlor, and he spends his carefree days delivery pizzas, joking with his buddies, and teasing his girlfriend. His life changes forever when he learns that he’s soon to be a father. Kunal doesn’t take the news too well and storms out. He sees the error of his ways and returns to make things up to his expecting girlfriend. Later on Kunal meets his boss’ wife who seems possessed by a demon of sorts, and afterwards he sets out to deliver food to a dark and foreboding house. When he enters he finds that door locks behind him, all of the lights turn out, and the woman who appeared before him earlier is gone. He’s locked in and must find a way out of this haunted house because every minute spent here puts him in danger.
Kunal is literally trapped in the home and the phone keeps ringing and it’s either his friends or Nikita on the other line. Thing is, they’re not calling him and instead tried reaching the police. Neither he nor they can explain this phenomenon. A strange man shows up at the door accusing Kunal of having relations with his wife, but even he cannot get it to budge. To make matters worse a little ghost of a girl is following our would be hero around the house calling him dad, and then shapeshifting into flesh eating zombies. Eventually his boss frees him from the home, but Kunal soon finds out that Nikita has gone missing. It turns out that she is now trapped in the haunted house and it’s up to Kunal and friends to save her. The possessed wife of his boss clearly has something to do with it and so he starts his investigation there before returning to the scene of the crime.
I feel like this wasn’t a horror movie that was very focused on the genre. It seemed to be focused more on the main character and his relationships than on anything remotely scary. The haunted house actually seemed more like a tool to push our reluctant hero into some self discovery. Personally I couldn’t be bothered to care that much about him, Nikita, or their relationship. The supporting characters are even less interesting and they each take up too much room in the story for my liking. The pacing feels very off with an immensely slow beginning which leads to only a little of the haunted house before slowing back down again. The premise behind Pizza had the potential for so much more, but it squanders this on trying to build up the dramatic elements which does it absolutely no favors. The big plot twist ruins what was already an uninteresting story.
If there’s one thing Pizza has going for it then it’s the visuals. Every scene outside of the haunted house is vibrant and colorful to the point where it seems they intentionally put props in to brighten things up. The use of yellow hues and lights is really eye catching. Inside the haunted mansion everything is dreary, and while I found it boring and contrived visually, this helps to set up a major contrast between it and the rest of the film. It also has a fair amount of style with an electronic/rock soundtrack, and an entirely animated opening sequence set to the tune of the weirdest song I’ve ever heard. It’s a hip hop song about pizza, as in, the food. It’s fun and bouncy, but hardly fits with the rest of the movie thematically. I wish the rest of the film was as clever or off the wall as this sequence.
Pizza
0.00
Pros
- Nice music and style
Cons
- Really, really boring
- Not scary
