13B - A Good Concept Going Wrong

When a director has a good script he can do two things, either screw it up completely or make beautiful movie out of it. But with 13B I think the third angle comes infront, if ever a movie has been let down by its second line of command then this is the one, by second line of command I mean Editing, Screenplay and Soundtrack. Any movie dealing with this genre of horror/thriller needs to have a soundtrack that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Shankar Eshaan Loy are a brilliant lot of music directors but then when it comes to thriller they have not been able to hold on. My personal choice for music for such genre would be Salim Suleimann.
The movie talks about a close knot family, of two brothers, a sister, a mother and their wives. They move into this new house that the two brothers buy after saving a lot of money. Like any other household, yeah pretty much the same. But then things start working differently. The milk gets spoilt everyday, the puja room is not able to be set up and then there is a daily soap that is shown only in this house. Creepy, well thats just the beginning, then there is the lift that won’t work when Madhavan tries it, the neighbour’s dog won’t be enter the house and to top it all the address is 13/B, by the way if you think B is infact 1 and 3 joined together, so double whammy. So we are set for a good thriller, well the actors don’t disappoint. Madhavan is his usual self, which is good. Neetu Chandra’s looks works well for her homly image of a bahu. Poonam Dhillon, her comeback, is good. The movie talks about role of TV in our life and how we are falling victim to this machine.
The movie goes for a toss with lack of good editing, when you are making a thriller you cannot compromise on the length and the camera angles need to have cutting edge feel to it. The D.O.P needs to take a few cues from the Ram Gopal Verma thriller BHOOT, one of my fav bollywood horror movie. The flash back could have been trimmed a bit and the song sequences could have been done away with. Screenplay is poor, thats all I need to say.