Nirvana Inn Adil Hussain Shines In An Eerie But Not Scary Shining

Nirvana Inn(Cinemapreneur)

Starring  Adil  Hussain,  Sandhya Mridul, RajshreeDeshpande

Written  & Directed  by  Vijay  Jayapal

Rating: **

An expectably polished performance from Adil Hussain, which  conveys deep echoes of Jack Nicholson  in  Stanley Kubrick’s  horror classic The Shining, cannot salvage this weak  atmospheric eerie misfire about an Assamese boatman serving a ‘debt’  sentence  in the  chilling tranquility  of Manali.

Once we  get to know that  the guests arriving at  the inn are not what they seem to be, the  narrative merely seems to be making all the  noises that we associate with a  ‘classy’  horror film. Some  of it, like a very well-shot ‘grief’ encounter between the  boatman-turned-watchman Jogi  and a mysterious  woman(Rajshri  Deshpande, trying to inject some sense  into her illogical role) at  the inn shot in a tight corner of a  cottage  conveys  a building pressure.

Alas, such scattered moments do not add up to anything substantially  intriguing let alone scary.  Writer-director Vijay Jayapal plays it by numbers: a man in traditional Assamese mask  roams the Manali forests, a secret drawer in a cupboard that just won’t open, sounds of animals pounding against the  roof in the dead of the night….what  does it  all mean? Does  randomness in  afterlife have to be conveyed in screen with such convenient  randomness?

 Some of  the   intended horror turns out to be unintentionally funny. Sandhya  Mridul who seems  to be  the  only normal character around, soon begins to act strange. Her eyes turn zombie   like  and she  seems  to be  doing a  poor  replica of  the walking dead.There is  even a shared  kiss with another woman. No idea why the two women were suddenly kissing. Probably  just got bored.

Holding on stoutly  and  preventing the  wobbly boat  from  capsizing is the ever-dependable Adil Hussain. From his  impeccable Assamese accent to that  elegant Bhaonadance(again , brought in just to be exotic)  distant haunted stricken  look  in his  eyes… Adil’s  performance conveys  a lot more than the script had bargained  for.With a bit more care polish and fleshing out of characters  , and a bit less randomness in the writing , Nirvana Inn  could actually have amounted to something relevant  in  the sadly neglected genre  of Horror in Indian cinema.