13B
Directed by Vikram Kumar
At ImaginAsian Theater
Runtime: 146 min.
Although Vikram Kumar’s 13B has liberally swiped several ideas from what most Americans associate with J-horror flicks—haunted technology, warped photographs, musical numbers—both the film’s main problem and joy are of a different variety. This is after all a Bollywood film, so the sins of the past that assault poor beleaguered Manohar (Madhavan) are of a domestic disposition. Like almost every contemporary Bollywood flick—even Rakesh Roshan’s chipper 2006 superhero flick Krrish about a superman and his…mama?—13B is very much a family film, or at least, one about the family. This is both an inescapable obstacle and a mystifyingly ingratiating complication to the film’s stock plot, one which bears progressive but very campy fruit.
There’s something strange going on in 13B, the new abode of Manohar and his typically massive nuclear family—wife (Neetu Chandra), mother, brother, sister, nephew, niece. The TV turns itself on to a prophetic soap opera foretelling the family’s dark future every afternoon at 1pm—13 o’clock, nyuk nyuk—the prayer room refuses to let icons be hung in it—“it seems like industrial power,” an injured workman yelps—photos taken on Manohar’s Nokia camera phone come out hilariously warped and there’s an oddly friendly blind guy just down the hall. Worse still is that the apartment has an unfortunate propensity for dutch angles, the camera’s filter is stuck on the same kind of sepia you can find on your Nokia camera phone and when things get dramatic, the cameraman gets the St. Vitus shakes. Which is to say: 13B is a very shaggy dog.
At the same time, there’s a disarmingly benign, albeit decidedly precious, charm to the film. The omnipresent cynicism that goes hand-in-hand with the typical contemporary Hollywood horror flick has been replaced with clumsy earnestness. At one point, during the second of the film’s three musical numbers, it looks like the family might even be able to live with the weird goings-on.
Though Manohar’s wife has just gotten pregnant and his family’s lives are being broadcast on a show that the family couldn’t turn off if they tried, everything looks great as they run up and down the shore, laughing at everything and nothing. That chipper attitude eventually evaporates—all I’ll say is: sledgehammer?!—but in that moment, the ghostly presence in their midst could just as easily be one of the family.
Then again, there’s something relatively sinister about the film, at least by Bollywood standards. For instance, the sexuality in the film is almost explicit. While a sex scene is sublimated into the first musical number, it’s initiated by a copy of the Kama Sutra Manohar teases his wife into treating like a cookbook (recipes he reads aloud to her include chicken kebab, chicken tikka and, my personal favorite, chicken 69).
Even the bloody finale seems positively forward-thinking as it doesn’t paint the villain as a mustachio-twirling baddie and even makes the good guy look worse in the long run. Granted, this is in a film where every creature with XX chromosomes is stupefied by their favorite serial, demonic or otherwise, but all things considered, it’s a hell of a baby step.
Directed by Vikram Kumar
At ImaginAsian Theater
Runtime: 146 min.
Although Vikram Kumar’s 13B has liberally swiped several ideas from what most Americans associate with J-horror flicks—haunted technology, warped photographs, musical numbers—both the film’s main problem and joy are of a different variety. This is after all a Bollywood film, so the sins of the past that assault poor beleaguered Manohar (Madhavan) are of a domestic disposition. Like almost every contemporary Bollywood flick—even Rakesh Roshan’s chipper 2006 superhero flick Krrish about a superman and his…mama?—13B is very much a family film, or at least, one about the family. This is both an inescapable obstacle and a mystifyingly ingratiating complication to the film’s stock plot, one which bears progressive but very campy fruit.
There’s something strange going on in 13B, the new abode of Manohar and his typically massive nuclear family—wife (Neetu Chandra), mother, brother, sister, nephew, niece. The TV turns itself on to a prophetic soap opera foretelling the family’s dark future every afternoon at 1pm—13 o’clock, nyuk nyuk—the prayer room refuses to let icons be hung in it—“it seems like industrial power,” an injured workman yelps—photos taken on Manohar’s Nokia camera phone come out hilariously warped and there’s an oddly friendly blind guy just down the hall. Worse still is that the apartment has an unfortunate propensity for dutch angles, the camera’s filter is stuck on the same kind of sepia you can find on your Nokia camera phone and when things get dramatic, the cameraman gets the St. Vitus shakes. Which is to say: 13B is a very shaggy dog.
At the same time, there’s a disarmingly benign, albeit decidedly precious, charm to the film. The omnipresent cynicism that goes hand-in-hand with the typical contemporary Hollywood horror flick has been replaced with clumsy earnestness. At one point, during the second of the film’s three musical numbers, it looks like the family might even be able to live with the weird goings-on.
Though Manohar’s wife has just gotten pregnant and his family’s lives are being broadcast on a show that the family couldn’t turn off if they tried, everything looks great as they run up and down the shore, laughing at everything and nothing. That chipper attitude eventually evaporates—all I’ll say is: sledgehammer?!—but in that moment, the ghostly presence in their midst could just as easily be one of the family.
Then again, there’s something relatively sinister about the film, at least by Bollywood standards. For instance, the sexuality in the film is almost explicit. While a sex scene is sublimated into the first musical number, it’s initiated by a copy of the Kama Sutra Manohar teases his wife into treating like a cookbook (recipes he reads aloud to her include chicken kebab, chicken tikka and, my personal favorite, chicken 69).
Even the bloody finale seems positively forward-thinking as it doesn’t paint the villain as a mustachio-twirling baddie and even makes the good guy look worse in the long run. Granted, this is in a film where every creature with XX chromosomes is stupefied by their favorite serial, demonic or otherwise, but all things considered, it’s a hell of a baby step.
