Can a film be scary without ghosts, supernatural beings, and other standard tropes of the horror genre? The trailer of Pihu has the answer. Featuring a two-year-old girl alone in a house with only an unconscious mother for company.
Produced by Ronnie Screwvala and Sidharth Roy Kapur, Pihu’s trailer begins by introducing the viewer to Pihu as she wakes up in bed alongside her mother. A few generic shots establishing the ‘sweet’ and ‘adorable’ nature of a kid, the crux of the plot is laid out – that she is alone at home.
Seeing a two-year-old getting locked up in the fridge might be a horrifying thought for many, however, in this movie it is only the tip of the iceberg. What follows is a sequence of situations where things that could possibly go wrong go really wrong. The tension is escalated.
The clothes’ iron, microwave, gas stove – think any household item capable of causing harm, it has been employed to offer scares. Like 2012’s Vidya Balan-starrer Kahaani where a pregnant woman was made to go through adversarial circumstances, in Pihu the two-year-old girl has been effectively employed to raise the stakes. Myra Vishwakarma plays the two-year-old girl Pihu while Prerna Sharma plays her mother.
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Directed by journalist turned film-maker Vinod Kapri, Pihu is based on real-life incidents. Kapri, who won a national award for his 2014-documentary Can’t Take This Shit Anymore, made his feature film debut with Miss Tanakpur Haazir Ho – a social satire that spoke the plight of a man accused of sexually assaulting a buffalo.
Like Miss Tanakpur Hazir Ho, Pihu too has been screened at various film festivals, including 2017 International Film Festival of India and has been well received. The movie releases on November 16.
Watch the trailer here:
Image Courtesy: Film Companion