Bhooty Call - Pari

Two movies called "Pari" were released last year, one in India and one in Pakistan, and after the first five minutes of Pari (2018) I realized that I was watching the wrong movie.  This wasn't the blockbuster horror film starring Anushka Sharma as a mysterious woman who may be a supernatural being, it was the other one.

Pari begins like a lot of ghost movies begin - a young family, in this case Shehram (Junaid Akhtar), his wife Mehwish (Azekah Daniel), and their young daughter Pari (Khushi Maheen), move into a new house deep in the woods.  Shehram works, leaving Mehwish and Pari alone in the big creepy house all day, and spooky things begin to happen . . . eventually.  the first half of the movie is much more concerned with Shehram and Mehwish having solemn conversations about the move and carefully avoiding the topic of their struggling marriage. 

Things do finally start to get spooky, though.  Dead birds litter the ground around a nearby tree.  The rocking chair moves by itself.  Somet unseen force snaps the foosball table in half.  There's a ghostly blue boy that only Pari can see who sits in the top bunk of her bed  and drinks her milk.  And a homeless man (Saleem Mairaj) sits outside the property, stares at the family, and proclaims that Pari is the devil and needs to be thrown out of the house.

Spoiler: homeless guy is right.  Pari terrifies an elderly professor (Qavi Khan) who visits the family in time for her (deeply depressing) birthday party, and the professor conveniently drops dead right after asking Mehwish who Pari's real father is.  Mehwish does not answer, which means that while the supernatural spookiness is escalating, we also get a lot more solemn conversations in which husband and wife studiously avoid actually saying anything.

What I am saying is, this movie is slow and very, very serious.  It's like the Pakistani remake of  the Omen, directed by Ingmar Bergman.  The actors do their best, but with all the padding they really don't have much to work with.  I will say that the movie was shot in Ayubia national park, and the occasional glimpses we see of the forest are impressive.  Most of the time, though, you can't see the forest for the plodding.