Bhog, A Fear Feast  Of  Unimaginable Ramifications

Rating: *** ½

   Not a  fan of the horror genre, I was taken aback by how shaken I  was with the business on hand in Bhog(in Bengali on Hoichoi) largely for its central  performance. Actor  Anirban Bhattacharya’s  jolting performance as a workingclass bloke  who  transforms into a possessed entity, right in front of our disbelieving eyes, echoes  Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

 There  is an unsettling  normalcy to Atin’s behaviour , his environment and his near ones at  the start. Admittedly Atin lost his  mother when he was young. But he  was more than compensated for by a mother-figure  Pushpa (Sudipa Basu) whom Atil treats with a mixture of  reverence and mischief.

 How  is he , or we, to know that Pushpa would disappear into thin air, literally with no forwarding  address?

 There is a chilling finality to the  eerie happenings in this sturdily ominous fear feast , based on a short story  by Avik Sarkar. Shantanu Mitra Neogi’s screenplay opens up the story, encrypts a lot of  creepy atmospherics into the plot, and  avoids all prevarication.

   Actor turned director  Parambrata Chattopadhyay, no stranger to tales  told in restless repose, restricts  the movement  of the principal character largely in modest suburban working class  home, so  well appointed  it could be anyone’s  cosy nest.

 This  sense  of  domestic comfort, the feeling of being at-home, amplifies the  horror that ensues,  much like what happens to Revathy  and  her screen-son  in the Malayalam film Bhoothakaalam where, much like in Bhog, every  corner  of  the   house  becomes a  dreadful  threat to the inhabitants.

 Elementary question: why doesn’t Atin just leave the cursed home? Not so easy! The  idol-worship, his  mounting  zeal for idolization, almost a   parable  for  the fanaticism that is all around us,are all manifestations of his own unformed  desire to be  “possessed” to be owned by  an extraneous presence.Some seek it in marriage. Atin finds  it in idol worship.

The arrival  of  a mysterious dangerous  woman Damri(Parno Mitra) coincides  with  the  exit  the  sweet trustworthy  Pushpadi  from Atin’s life. It also signals his descent into a ritualistic  hell best  experienced rather than described.

 I would like  to  make mention  one  sequence where Atin dances  before the idol as a man gone far beyond redemption  , as his horrified uncle watches from a corner. It is  a moment shot with  sliding grace, the shiver which runs up our spine is caught in furtive glances of  ruinous import.

Parambrata shoots Atin’s  eerie experiences  through  lenses that neither exaggerate  nor underplay the enormity of the supernatural takeover, so that we the viewers are  caught in the middle  of  the unearthly possession in a way we haven’t experienced in recent times.

There is no extra  meat in  Bhog .It ambushes your attention and then refuses to let go.