Bali [dir. Vishal Furia]

Bali (Sacrifice) is the follow-up to director Vishal Furia's previous Marathi horror film Lapachhapi (Hide & Seek) [reviewed on this blog HERE]. Vishal's formula, if one may call it that for a 2-feature old maker (his third and most recent release Chhorii is a Hindi language remake of Lapachhapi), is to mix the chills with an underlying social message. Going into the specific details would be giving spoilers for those that have not seen them, so I will as much as possible refrain from doing so. What I liked most about Lapachhapi was its great location and atmosphere - Vishal has a real knack for identifying the inherent spookiness of an isolated / abandoned place and using simple but evocative visual framing ideas to allow the viewers to enhance it manifold in their heads. The best part of that film was the muscular middle-section showing a tantrik sequence where the protagonist appears to be trapped in a haze between reality and nightmare, not knowing which is which. The crafting of that sequence indicated a director with strong horror chops if he could control some of his other excesses, and it was with some anticipation that I sat down to Bali.

After a short prologue, Bali's main story begins with Srikanth (Swapnil Joshi) and his son Mandar (Samarth Jadhav). The opening moments are devoted to showing the close affection between the widower father and the little boy. Unfortunately, this is through cloying dialog and sentimental twaddle music that generates a sinking feeling about what lies ahead. Moving ahead, Mandar falls faint while playing cricket and is rushed by the father to the hospital, where incidentally he had been birthed.

Jansanjeevani Hospital (the name roughly translates as 'panacea for the masses') is where the bulk of the film is set. It is an old-style private-cum-charitable hospital setting with a closed-up disused wing, playing the same function of isolated eerie location as the remote sugarcane field in Lapachhapi. Once inside, Swapnila Gupta's script pulls out the corks on the weird stuff, as Mandar meets another child patient Bhaskar, who seems to move in and out at will, and claims to communicate with a nurse named Elizabeth who lives in the abandoned wing with the broken boarded-up windows.

This is also where the narrative becomes wobbly in credibility: The charming Dr. Radhika Shenoy (Pooja Sawant, returning from Lapachhapi) may radiate a caring attitude towards her pediatric wards, and is the daughter of the doctor that officiated Mandar's birth, but the fact that on his very first day in the hospital there are at least 3 instances of child patients, including Mandar, wandering off unattended and being found in strange places should have raised louder warning bells in Srikanth's mind. Even given that his financial difficulties may not give him a lot of choice about medical aid for his son, in an age where folks are ready to raise hell and bust a doctor's nose for any perceived negligence, Srikanth's wimpy acceptance of the "Oh hey, that kid's gone off again" situation in the hospital is strange. Perhaps the fact that Mandar was born there gives him a lingering attachment of familiarity and trust. Perhaps Dr. Radhika's charms are not restricted to her child patients alone. But the script does not trouble to give us ground for Srikanth's passivity.

It also does not sufficiently denote Srikanth's social circumstances. What does he do for a living? How does he manage work while at the hospital? Why does this amiable guy not seem to have any relatives / neighbors / friends to call upon? I am not a huge advocate for a story being explained to death, but there is an noticeable vacuum of context here. All we get is a lot of scenes where Srikanth implores Mandar to stay in his bed, while the brat (oh yes, that kid is annoying) whines incessantly about wanting to meet Elizabeth. These lapses in narrative are not sufficiently compensated for by the scare quotient. For seasoned horror fans, the clumsy cliches - like blood appearing on the hand-drawn map of the abandoned wing that Mandar gives Srikanth - generate more eye-rolling than dread. The whispery voices and glimpses of disfigured spooks passing from behind or reaching out have no freshness.

While not hugely enthralled, I did want to know where all of this leads to, and stuck out till the end. This eventually yielded benefits with one late scene showing dramatic character reveals and unveiling the cause of the eerie manifestations. There are also some important statements made about the modus operandi of hospitals and shady donation calls. While not as powerful as the aforementioned tantrik sequence from Lapachhapi, it is a heartening reminder of the maker's potential. Sad then, that it comes after so much empty noodling and is followed by a mundane finale.

Even with the lack of novelty, there's a decent story in Bali (and a hospital is a great horror setting - check out 1994's The Kingdom) A focused appeal to the sensitivities of horror buffs could have provided a well-made time-killer. But there are serious issues with the execution, subtlety being the biggest casualty. The incessant background score that seeks to underline every emotion only assaults the eardrums; Vishal would do better to trust his audience, and avoid such spoon-feeding. At the same time, the macabre element is anemic, and apart from that one late scene, there is little here that hasn't been done long before and to better effect.

As it stands, Bali does not live up to the ballyhoo.