Phobia. Review on Phobia

I am like allclappings for Viki Rajani for writing such an amazing script; keeping it female-centric was one of the best parts of it. The title very much gives away what the movie is going to be about, no pretences. This story is about Mahek Deo(Radhika Apte) who has recently been sexually assaulted and starts suffering from Agoraphobia, fear of open spaces and conditions that will cause her pain and embarrassment. To recuperate, she stays with her sister and gets initial help form psychologists. Staying at home for months and repeated panic attacks, it gets difficult for her sister. To get cured, Mahek’s wanna-be-boyfriend Shaan(Satyadeep Mishra) gets her a place for herself to beat the lurking demon in her mind.

Mahek staying alone in an apartment with already unsettling thoughts and panics, decides to be positive with this confrontation. But then this apartment has its own set of story to unravel. The girl who stayed prior to Mahek has been missing or believed to be long absconding.

Then Mahek begins to notice weird things in the house. Maybe it’s really there or her mind is at play? Nothing and no one can tell you what to expect next. You are left guessing till the end of the movie.

Though the second half gets little taut and as if writers fail to see the script till very end. It gets slower and little predictable, with heavy background music and slow zooms to add fear and few logic lapses here and there. But Mahek kept the flow going for me.

Finally, sighs a movie with no jaadu-mantra, tona-totka, chudail, graveyards and exorcist, literally breath of freshness. The whole movie is set up in an empty apartment with an eerily locked room, bath tub(which is most likely to be bloodied), cracked mirror, fleeting apparitions and obviously, a black cat.