Blurr Review: Taapsee Pannu carries this gripping thriller on her shoulders but it deserved better execution

Akash Bhatnagar

December 9, 2022
9:00 am
Comments off

Blurr Review: Taapsee Pannu carries this gripping thriller that deserved better execution

Blurr Movie Review:

First thing first, Blurr marks the first stint as a producer for Taapsee Pannu and the actress-producer should be applauded for the subject she chose for her first production. A remake of the Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s 2010 Spanish film Julia’s Eyes, Blurr promised an intriguing plot, and it delivered on that. However, the execution of it all is where the film suffered.

The creation of the environment in the film, the colour palette, the locations and the whole ambience is what makes you feel engrossed throughout the run of the film, but when the performances and the writing kicks in, the film begins getting ‘blurry’ indeed. Blurr has all the right ingredients of a spooky and intriguing murder mystery thriller and it builds on it, but falls short of reaching the level of excellence it clearly had the potential for.

Story:

Gayatri (played by Taapsee Pannu) is an anthropologist and one day, she senses her twin sister Gautami, who is going blind and is waiting for a donor, is in trouble and goes to check on her with her husband Neel (Gulshan Devaiah). Upon reaching, they find Gautami dead, and while the cops rule it out as a suicide, Gayatri is convinced that it is a murder. With no one supporting her, she embarks on a journey to uncover the truth, while herself battling the same condition that Gautami suffered and has started going blind. Will she be able to find out the truth with a blurred vision?

Star Performances:

It is indeed a Taapsee Pannu show all the way. The film centers around her and depends completely on her capabilities as she is practically in each and every frame of the film, and she hardly disappoints. She takes a while to adjust to the world and her character in the beginning, and I couldn’t notice any prominent dissimilarity between Gautami and Gayatri, but a few minutes into the film, Taapsee finds her groove. The conviction in her part where she plays blind is truly praiseworthy. Although, I must add that her dialogue delivery at some places felt a little hammy, something you don’t expect from her. It isn’t her greatest performance, but surely amongst her better ones.

I was heartbroken to see Gulshan Devaiah in this one. He was heavily underutilised and the part where he is on screen, he seems to be trying to pull off something different that is just coming out fake and pretentious. It felt like the actor inside him wants to come out but the demeanour that he has donned for the character, is just not allowing him to. He is an actor of immense caliber and seeing him in such an underwhelming avatar was indeed a bit disappointing.

Abhilash Thapliyal delivers an impressive performance, showing that it isn’t just the web series space that he has mastered. He has a pretty predictable yet extremely well executed part in the film, and he delivers it with full authenticity. He already leaves you impressed with just his voice, even before you get to see him. But here too, there is one integral scene of him that should prove chilling, but turns involuntarily funny, making you feel a little curled up. Still, on a whole, he has done a brilliant job.

Kritika Desai, Bipin Nath, Sumit Nijhawan constitute for some of the more important supporting cast, but except Kritika maybe, that too in one or two scenes, no one leaves an impact as such. They just act as a means to take the story forward without leaving any mark of their own.

Direction/Screenplay:

This part is a little conflicting for me. To begin with the good part, I have to credit the cinematography of Sudhir Chaudhary who has created an engrossing world that hooks you in the story brewing in it and the use of colour by the set designers and the production team is impeccable. Whereas, as for the direction and the screenplay, it falters in the first half and seems quite superficial at many parts, but in the second half, the visual storytelling is too good to miss. The way director Ajay Bahl connects the audiences to Taapsee’s blindness by not showing the faces of people she is interacting with, you really feel like you are in Taapsee’s world. But I also need to mention that there are some scenes that feel really fake and over the top, especially a scene where Taapsee and Gulshan talk romantically about the sky. The chemistry is just not there, and at places, it’s not just Taapsee but many other actors whose dialogue delivery just seems weird and those scenes probably should have been redubbed.

Conclusion:

In conclusion of my review for Blurr, I would say that it was a sincere attempt by the team and the technicians made it engrossing, with Taapsee and Abhilash’s performances supporting them, but the writing, direction and rest of the performances were very shaky that stopped this film from reaching its full potential. It is an okay film but when you have an actress like Taapsee at the front, seeing her filmography, Blurr would sit in the middle of the pack in that list.