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While I’ve always enjoyed good thrillers, horrors and bloodbaths weren’t really my thing. The pandemic changed that. I turned to spooky stuff to get my mind off the very real threat out there. It worked. Now, I no longer need that distraction but I find I’ve sort of developed a taste for it. Readers recommending books that made their skin crawl makes mine tingle in anticipation.

I’d heard a lot about ‘No Exit’ by Taylor Adams. Some friends said it left them traumatized and booktubers would shut their eyes, shake their heads and squeal when reviewing this book. I couldn’t find it at any bookstore in Kathmandu but I finally got the e-book. Twenty pages in, I wasn’t very enthused. I didn’t like the writing style and the setting felt a bit off but things escalated pretty quickly and left me stunned. No Exit is, hands-down, the best edge-of-the-seat thriller I’ve read in a long time.

On her way home to see her sick mother, college student Darby Throne gets stranded at a highway rest stop in Colorado because of a blizzard. There’s no cellphone signal. At the rest stop, there are four other people waiting out the storm with her. Then, Darby sees a little girl locked in an animal crate at the back of a van parked next to her car. She quickly finds out who, out of the four people, the van belongs to and everything from then on is about saving the child and ultimately herself too when the kidnapper finds out she has seen the girl.

The premise feels like that of any other thriller. But what goes down is insane. It’s creepy. The scenes are so vivid. It makes you jump, gasp, and shudder. There were multiple times when I had to put the kindle down and cover my eyes and ears to shake off the images that were forming in my head. I was visibly rattled and my husband, more than once, commented on why I was reading a book that was driving me crazy and making me shriek. Thinking about it now, two weeks after finishing the book, still makes my heart race.

It was so good (if this were a post on Instagram instead of a review in a national newspaper, I’d have put 10, no 20, o’s behind that so.) It’s definitely not for the faint of heart but if you enjoy an eerie, nightmarish read, you’re doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t pick this one up right away.

Fiction
No Exit
Taylor Adams
Published: 2019
Publisher: William Morrow
File size: 1747 KB
Print length: 371 pages

Ever had one of those journeys when you’ve planned everything perfectly but still end up being miserable? You’re going to an amazing destination, you have a safe ride to take you, your travel companions are the best you can get and you have everything to make you comfortable. But then something goes wrong mid-way and you have no idea what it is. But it still affects you and your travel is ruined.

This is what happens to Netflix’s freshly released “Mimi.” The Hindi-language film has an amazing cast, a decent production budget and an intriguing subject. But it fails to capitalize on its strengths and goes awry in storytelling.

Written and directed by Laxman Utekar, the drama initially disguises itself as a retrospective on commercial surrogacy. It is thus cleverly placed in 2013, around six years before India’s Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill came into effect, to give the audience a glimpse of what surrogate pregnancy looked like for India’s poor who were doing it for money.

An American couple—John (Aidan Whytock) and Summer (Evelyn Edwards)—have failed to conceive naturally and are searching for a surrogate mother in Rajasthan, India. They are looking for a “young and healthy female” to bear their child when they come across Mimi (Kriti Sanon), a local dancer. Bhanu (Pankaj Tripathi), their taxi driver and guide, then takes on the difficult task of convincing Mimi to become a surrogate mother for the American couple. With dreams of becoming a Bollywood actor but no means of getting there because of her humble background, Mimi takes up the offer for INRs 2 million.

The couple then leaves for the US and Mimi, lying to her parents—Mansingh (Manoj Pahwa) and Shobha Rathore (Supriya Pathak)—that she has a shoot for nine months, goes to live in her friend’s house. All is going well for the parties involved when at almost the end of the nine months a routine checkup reveals the child Mimi is bearing might have Down Syndrome. This scares the American parents who refuse to own up the child and run away, leaving Mimi to her fate. Now Mimi not only has to decide on the fate of the unborn child but also face her unassuming family and a conservative society. What she chooses to do and the effects of her decisions form the rest of the movie.

The tragedy with Mimi is, despite having a strong subject like pregnancy and motherhood as its central theme, it never connects its audience to the characters emphatically. Albeit using up around 2hrs 12mins of screen time, the film treats all the conflicts and confrontations it raises only superficially. Everything is happening too easily. The sense of acceptance of all situations by everyone makes it unrealistically altruistic, thus never invoking much emotion in the audience. 

Humor and comic timing of the actors make Mimi an enjoyable affair nonetheless. Where the writer/s have failed to address the gravity of certain situations, they have at other times inserted some really witty dialogues and situations that in turn are performed well—especially by lead actors Sanon and Tripathi. Sanon, as Mimi—the center of attention—has a coming-of-age story to tell and the actor does manage to deliver one of her best performances. And Tripathi, with the legacy he has built over the past few years, does what he is expected to—manifest a character that blends into the story and setting so well that you forget you’ve seen him as an entirely different person in the past. We wish Mimi’s family—the parents played by the talented Pahwa and Pathak—had got a more defining role. Had their characters been written a bit stronger, their presence would have added more value to the film.

Who should watch it?

Even with all its flaws in storytelling, the acting and elements of writing/filmmaking in Mimi make it worth a watch for any OTT viewer who is into comedy, drama, and family films. But if you’re someone who looks for strong social messaging and life-changing ideas, you might want to take a pass on this one.

Rating: 2.5 stars
Genre: Comedy, drama
Actors: Kriti Sanon, Pankaj Tripathi
Director: Laxman Utekar
Run time: 2hrs 12mins

This week, I wanted to watch a Nepali movie. To be honest, I kind of started missing the good old days when I’d go to the multiplex halls every week, popcorn in hand, parking coupon in the pocket, and try to enjoy whatever was presented on screen by Nepali filmmakers. I tried to relive the experience, although at home, streaming on a 43” inch screen on YouTube. Now the thing about YouTube or an OTT platform is, it gives you immense choice on what to watch as well as the option of skipping through boring parts. You can watch a 1hr 30-minute feature film in 15 minutes and still understand what’s going on.

I did the same this week. Not because I was in a hurry, but because some recent (pre-2020) movies I watched on YouTube did not deserve more than 10 minutes of attention, including a couple by Nepal’s highest-paid ‘film star’. Disappointed, I also began fearing for the future of the Nepali film industry. I cannot speak for all, but I am pretty sure a lot of multiplex audiences like me have been spoiled by OTTs where we can seamlessly watch movies from around the world on their personal screens and for a fraction of the price we spent in theaters. If the Nepali film industry does not step up its game, it’s going to collapse in a few years, I thought, while watching the opening credits of the 2019-film “Gopi.”

Written and directed by film journalist-turned-filmmaker Dipendra Lama, “Gopi” is a perfect example of the route Nepal could take to the OTT platform. It is a film that represents a part of Nepali society and projects it on screen without superficial distortions. Lama, who is known to stylistically stay closer to the real world than most Nepali filmmakers, directs the extremely talented Bipin Karki in the lead role of Sudhir aka Gopi. The actor-director duo tells the story of a common man who has been invisible in Nepali cinema for so many years.

Sudhir (Karki) is a college lecturer and a cattle farmer. So passionate is he about raising cows, he is even ready to give up even his girlfriend Sujata (Surakshya Panta) if forced into a choice. As it is, his relationship with his father (Prakash Ghimire) is stressful. The father wants him to apply for a US Green Card; Sudhir does not want to leave the country. Sudhir is like some of our youths who are determined to do something worthwhile in their homeland, and his father represents the many parents who’d spend millions of rupees to send their children abroad rather than support their trades or professions in the country itself.

As any common man would do, Sudhir struggles. A passionate farmer who loves cows, Sudhir has to fight through many difficulties to survive. His personal relationships are strained because of his choice of work, and this country, he finds, although it is still deemed an agricultural nation, is no country for poor farmers!

Sudhir’s story is so organic that had it not been for the background score and the multi-angle shots, it would seem like a documentary. But that’s also a setback for the film. In the pursuit of genuineness, imagination takes a backseat and thus the tempo suffers. Throughout its 2hr run-time, the film maintains a constant pace and never does anything more than portray Sudhir’s life as it is. The film’s inability to heighten conflicts at times, and a somewhat lazy climax, do not allow the film to maximize its true potential. Nonetheless, I’d watch Gopi half-a-dozen times than see the highest-paid Nepali actor disappoint with every expression. 

Who should watch it?

Gopi is a family film and if you scroll through its comment section on OSR Digital’s official YouTube channel, you’ll notice many youths, especially those who have been forced to migrate abroad for work, identify with it closely. Still, this family entertainer is meant for people from all walks of lives and we highly recommend Gopi to all Nepali audiences as a preview of what Nepali movies on OTT might look like.  

Rating 3
GOPI
Drama
Director: Dipendra Lama
Cast: Bipin Karki, Barsha Raut, Surakshya Pant
Time: 2hrs 2mins 

If there is a movie adaptation of a book on Netflix that I haven’t read, I will put off watching it till I’ve gotten around to reading the book. It’s a crime to watch the movie before you’ve read the book, right? I think it should be. However, I must confess, I watched ‘Bird Box’ before reading Josh Malerman’s debut novel by the same name. I had heard so much about it that I just couldn’t stop myself from hitting play. Also, Sandra Bullock, who portrays the protagonist Malorie, is one of my favorite actors.

Bird Box is a dystopian novel where unseen creatures, whose mere sight drives people crazy enough to kill themselves, are taking over the planet. At the beginning of the story, Malorie is seen leaving the house with two children she calls ‘Boy’ and ‘Girl’ to go on a boat ride up the river in search of the safe place that is presumably somewhere out there. The catch is that they are blindfolded and Malorie and the children have to listen carefully to navigate their way despite not being able to see the danger that lurks around them. The narrative alternates between their journey up the river and Malorie’s flashbacks to events that led them to that point.

This is the first time I watched a movie and then read the related book. It’s also perhaps the only time I have liked the movie adaptation better than the book. Is it because I watched the movie first and Malorie was Sandra Bullock instead of a character in my head? Is it because the tension is palpable in the movie and not so much in the book where things appear rather laid back at times? Or is it because I already knew what was going to happen and waiting for it to unfold page by page was a bit taxing?

The book feels a bit stretched out. Malerman builds up tension, a sense of danger, only to have it fizzle out. And there are quite a few such incidents. Then, you know there are some dangerous creatures out there but you don’t know what they are and you never find out. That curiosity is never quelled. It’s frustrating.

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoyed the book. I had a good time. I was a nervous wreck every time I got a sense that something was about to happen. I was rooting for the other survivors—namely Tom, Olympia, Jules, Cheryl, and Felix—even when I knew they were doomed. It’s just that I think I would have loved the book a whole lot more had I read it before watching the movie. Note to self: Never again.

3 stars
Fiction
Bird Box
Josh Malerman
Published: 2014
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages: 379, Paperback