Gurmeet Choudhary Starred ‘The Wife’ on Zee5: A Part Fresh, Part Stereotypical Horror film

Ishika Aggarwal March 19, 2021

353 3 minutes read

Gurmeet Choudhary starred ‘The Wife’, a horror film that ends up being grose and melodramatic climax

“Mera Maana hai ki bhoot ek bhut hi powerful emotion ka molik avsesh hai, jo baar baa vapis aata hai, tab tak, jab tak voh apne sath hue galat ko sahi na kar de”. – Raima Das in the film, The Wife. Gurmeet Choudhary starred ‘The Wife’ is certainly based on this line. The film has drama, suspense, newness, creativity and great references, and romance as well. As a viewer, it will drive you to the moment where you will get interested in knowing what is going to happen, why are things happening the way they are happening, and who is making it all happen. The film casts, Gurmeet Chaudhary, Mritunjoy Dev Nath, and Sayani Datta. It is written and directed by Sarmad Khan.

The film is about a couple, Varun (Gurmeet Chaudhary) and Arya (Sayani Datta) who have just moved into a new flat. The couple is quite in love with each other when Arya starts to find that the house is haunted while Varun does not. They start to have rifts and disagreements while Varun starts to recall her past incidents that could possibly explain why such haunted things are happening in their house. It is part romantic, part erotic, and part scary to hear Amir Khusrow’s ghazal, ‘Chaap Tilak sab cheeni, mose naina milaik’ (You’ve taken away my look, my tilak, and everything from me by looking into my eyes) getting played every time we see a horrific incident happening in the house.

the wife zee5

Talking about the treatment of the film, the film progresses quite nicely, it feeds you with enough traces of something wrong, yet as what is wrong unfolds, the story becomes grose and stereotypical, in fact nonsensical. It simply makes you feel that the story lifted up the plot with so much suspense and then it is leading up to an easy, basic, stereotypical, and unlikely reasoning story as the climax. While this disappointment builds up, even in the last 10 minutes, the final suspense can really blow your head.

Speaking of performances, Gurmeet Chaudhary absolutely did a good job here but talking about the writing of his character, there is a great scope of improvement. As an acting performance, it was a great attempt. Sayani Datta was also fine with her acting. Although, there are segments where she is very good, and segments where she gives exaggerated expressions, but all in all, it was fairly fine.

Talking about the technical innovations, it was a great attempt with respect to camera movement and sound design. The film has a lot of slow pan, tilt, and dolly shots that are known to be the perfect shots to create suspense. Their set design is also great, and complimenting the cinematographer’s need to create shots with mirrors. Glad to see no exaggerated set to make the film look like a horror film. It makes things look like something happening to normal people instead of making it a whole alien experience. There are several jump cuts used, a few of them are complimenting but a few are not. The sound design is quite like it should be.

Well, the film’s final 10 minutes reminds me of Anvita Dutt Guptan’s Bulbbul, and the camera movement reminds me of the pan shots of the Hollywood film, The Shining. Overall, considering that the film is an horror film, the most liked fact is that the elements used to show the haunted nature were unique. The washing machine, doors, wind chimes, cycle, the song, mirror, etc were put creatively and in the absolutely right frame and place. Overall, it was an okayish attempt at making a horror film. Kudos to the team of ‘The Wife’.

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