Michael (Vijay Sethupathi) is a pizza deliverer who lives with his girlfriend Anu (Ramya Nambeeshan), a college student who is penning a horror novel based on what she has learned in her classes, and to that end she is addicted to horror movies and supposedly true life supernatural documentaries of the sort that use infrared cameras to follow their investigators around in reputedly haunted locations. Michael is less sold on these efforts, but he puts up with him because he loves his girlfriend, yet their relationship is about to be put to the test when he returns home one day and finds Anu crying. On asking her gently what the matter is, she admits she is pregnant and doesn’t know how they will cope with a baby on their slender means…
Pizza was a Tamil horror movie that proved so successful that it was remade twice in quick succession in other Indian languages to appeal to different markets, and had a sequel the next year into the bargain. Back at the first incarnation, writer and director Karthik Subbaraj was wanting to make his gangster epic but the budget he needed was not forthcoming, so to prove he had what it took in the movie world he rustled up this cheaper chiller which did indeed demonstrate his skill and perhaps more importantly, his ability to generate a nice profit. It was not your average horror, as there was a big twist in the final act that had you reassessing what you had seen.
Not that this was an original trope, but Subbaraj applied it with some confidence that also made a commentary on gullibility, and how it was better to question the most farfetched tales you encountered since if they sounded too good to be true, they probably were. He had obviously seen too many supposedly real life documentaries on ghosts and all those movies that claimed to be based on true stories and thought, there must be more to this, resulting in a modest but neatly assembled chiller, though his inclusion of a punchline to the last couple of minutes spoke to a slight lack of conviction in what he had presented for the past couple of hours. Nevertheless, it reminded us this was supposed to be scary.
Michael asks Anu if she wants to keep the baby, a not too subtle hint that they really cannot afford it, but she flatly rejects the idea of an abortion, meaning he will have to scrimp and save if they want to get by from now on. They decide to get married for the sake of the child, but keep in mind that lack of funds, it will be important later on. Meanwhile, Michael’s boss has been suffering problems at home that his employee witnesses: the daughter is having some kind of mania spell where she exhibits strange behaviour, and the boss believes there’s a supernatural explanation: could she be possessed? She won’t even answer to her own name anymore, but Michael dismisses this as worrying, though nothing he can do to assist.
Yet what if the little girl has channelled some sinister forces that now our hero has met them face to face, want to infect his life in alarming ways? What happens is a night soon after the boss arrives at the pizza restaurant to discover his three employees have beaten each other up, and the explanation for that is outlandish to say the least, though after what he has seen he is more inclined to believe it. Michael explains that he went to deliver at a well-to-do home and was invited in by the lady of the house, but she couldn’t find the correct change to pay, then there was a power cut as she went upstairs. When Michael heard a loud commotion he ventured up to see if she was all right, and when he reached the bedroom he saw… Well, that would be telling, but suffice to say some nicely employed chills followed, with Sethupathi offering a decent account of rising panic, which the opening half hour of romance may not have prepared you for. There were songs appropriate to the action, but this was not a musical, it was a pleasing mystery with a conclusion you’ll either go along with or roll your eyes at. Probably the former. Music by Santosh Narayanan.
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