Footfairy Movie Review: Fear Is The Key!

Footfairy(& TV)

Starring  Gulshan Devaiah, Kunaal  Roy  Kapur, Sarika Ghatge

Directed  by  Kaniskh Verma

Rating: ***

 Why does  the serial killer.  nicknamed  Footfairy , like to cut off his female  victims’ feet after  murdering them? Maybe he then  finds it easier to  stuff their bodies into the  suitcases before  dumping them in abandoned places? Or maybe he just doesn’t like them(women’s feet)  or likes them  way more than normal.

 Does he have a  collection of  feet in his home displayed on the  shelf with  the appropriate  dates to  brag  about with his  children? Meena  Kumar in Pakeezah  had Raj Kumar writing poetry about her feet. What  to say  about a serial killer’s  feet-rat(nature) when till the end , we are not  told who the  killer was? That’s right. This film opts for an ‘open’ ending.

  And  yet despite its odd propensity to not take sides and to leave the killer’s identity unrevealed Footfairy is  a moderately watchable serial-killer yarn with the natural Gulshan Devaiah cast as Vivan Deshmukh a CBI investigator  on the trail  of  a nasty serial killer with a feet fetish.

At one point while strolling with  her  boyfriend  Gulshan Devaiah, Sarika Ghatge reveals how women are  so scared  of the serial killer on  the prowl  that they  wear only sneakers while commuting.  We  don’t  notice any of this  fear  clouding the city. The  narrative built around an tightly-corseted cat-and-mouse  game  between  the  killer and  the  investigative  officer, has  no time to  develop  the characters  or to  even give them a  chance to be anything but  aloof props. There  is  this young sweet girl ,Vivan’s neighbor whom he  is  fond of me  in a  paternal  way. We want to know more about their friendship. But finally we are left with  just vague  brush-strokes  of  hints and  suggestions.Finally like  most female characters  in our cinema, she is just a  victim.

Apart  from Gulshan Devaiah and  Kunaal  Roy Kapur(who joins  the   plot  mid-way) every supporting actor believes in playing acting-acting  relentlessly.  They deliver  their dialogues as though they are  reading  from a teleprinter while the  serial killer continues  to not just  a break  a leg but  also dismember the proprietor of the leg. RIP.