9th October 2018 | 31 Days of “Alternative” Horror: Darr @ the Mall
Darr @ the Mall was one of those surprises that came about while looking for movies with impressive set pieces. Darr @ the Mall turned out to be a much better choice than Langoliers (at the airport) or Chopping Mall (at a generic shopping mall). The mall in this movie is not just the set piece, but its existence is the reason why restless dead are there in the first place. It’s an impressive structure, with a face, and a mouth, and every inch of ground is used to its fullest; even the escalators, which haven’t been a solid set piece in cinema since American Werewolf in London.
Darr, which in Hindi, means “terror” at the Mall is a revenge driven ghost story, set in one of the largest shopping malls in India. Apparitions have been making appearances for many years it seems: captured as photographs and grabbed from CCTV, and kept within a dossier ready for our main character, Vishnu Sharma, played by Jimmy Shergill, to discover as he begins his new job as chief security officer. He takes over the job of the previous chief who had been found dead, garrotted at the wheel of his car at the mouth opening of the mall’s multi-storey car park. That event was the first of a resurgence of activity from the ghosts who have waited patiently for the right time to exact their revenge on the mall owners Mr. Manchanda and Mr. Khan for something that they did. What did they do? I would rather you found that out for yourselves.
Naturally, they had waited a long time for this: and as the mall is celebrating its inauguration, the owners are throwing a wild private party right there at the mall. All shareholders and investors are invited, as are their families, most of which are consenting adults who liven up the event considerably. When you have all the “right people” in one place, surely, it’s going to stir up the forces of the extraordinary.
There are things you expect in a movie from India: a dance routine, which appears about 45 minutes into the movie and gives us a brief tonal shift.
From start to finish, the “Darr” builds and the plot gently weaves itself around the characters that become trapped within the Mall. The jump scares are appropriate and not just there to fill gaps. We gets to explore the walkways, the stores, the bars and we also find ourselves pulled into all the dark storage areas and offices where the general public never venture. This film delivers the horror, with a great sense of design that is very much contained.
When you watch Darr @ the Mall, you will find sequences where characters are smoking or drinking on screen: a small message at the bottom right hand side: smoking kills — which I doubt was in the director’s vision to have such a message on screen about a film that involves the burning down of an orphanage. Do socially responsible on screen text get in the way of the movie? Not really, but it’s there, you either see it or you’re already caught up in the narrative. Does it mean that after the movie is over, when you light up outside in the car park, will you really take away the warning message that you saw briefly an hour or so into a movie? If it is one of your take home thoughts, then the filmmakers didn’t do a good enough job of making their movie memorable above that of any warning notice. (Even though strobe lighting is used which for some can be even more harmful.)
But what about its connection with Western culture; in particular, the horror genre itself? Well. The name of the shopping mall is the “Amity Mall”. That is an honour for sure, and so let’s branch out and try something new, so that we can once again honour a worldwide horror movie tradition.
Written by: Stephen Radford
website: stephenradford.com
Next: 10th October: Urban Ghost Story
