Review of Bengali movie "Chhaya Manush - The Pact"

The first thing that can be said that this movie has been promoted very badly the only saving grace for its publicity is the face of four powerhouse performers on its posters.Thanks to its lesser publicity before watching the movie the audience is totally clueless about what to expect from the movie and at the end of the movie the audiences will surely understand one thing that one should be ready to expect the unexpected.

This is a thriller with some supernatural elements thrown into it but it can not be categorized as a supernatural thriller rather it can be termed as a psychological thriller.

This is the story of an author Rahul Majumdar(Parambrato Chatterjee), who was a renowned author once but currently his books are not working anymore. His wife has left him along with his child. His publisher Baidyanath Agarwal (Soumitra Chatterjee) is pressurizing him to write a hit book or send his advance money back. In such a situation he accidentally meets his one time friend Arka (Debdut Ghosh) who tells him a story about a pact. As per the pact a mysterious person Pranotosh Doyal Dinabandhu(Kaushik Ganguly) helps a person to fulfill all his wishes just like a genie in return he will ask for only one favor in future. The only condition is one can not go against the pact otherwise he have to die in three months.In spite of initial hesitation Rahul signs the pact and his life starts changing towards a bright future. He gets an opportunity to write a film script for that he goes to Darjeeling where he gets to meet Gauri (Raima Sen), who is the niece of the publisher Baidyanath. He falls in love with her but destiny has planned something else for him. 

A good suspense thriller needs two qualities one while creating the mystery it needs to engage its audiences with it and the other is when the mystery is solved it needs to look convincing and shocking. For this movie both the qualities are present but partially. Once the mystery is created in the first half it is engaging but it took too much time to develop the main story. Some unnecessary plots involving Arka and his wife could have been shortened using smart narration.Also it looks very much unconvincing the way Arka involves Rahul in this mystery. Then in the second half while the story shifted to Darjeeling a fresh mystery starts developing while the audiences are still involved with the first one, which makes the story too complicated. Also in the second half there are some unnecessary forced songs and romantic track between Rahul and Gauri which could have been easily avoided and it would have made it a pacy thriller. In the second half after a certain point of time the story becomes too much complex that the audiences also seems trapped and they are desperately trying to be out of it  just like the leading man Rahul. Finally when the mystery is revealed it is really shocking and unexpected. It is partially predictable but not totally.

As a director Arindam Mamdo Dey has made a really unexpected thriller but he could have work more on the screenplay and editing table so that the movie could have been little fast paced. 

As an actor Parambrato has done full justice to his character but the role is so much tailor made for him that there is nothing challenging for him. Same goes for Raima Sen. She is good as the mysterious woman but she has done similar type of role in a movie "C/O Sir" last year. There is Paoli Dam too as Rahul's friend and her scope is limited and she has done a okay job.But it is Kaushik Ganguly as Doyal who steals the show with his brilliant acting. The way he has played his character never going over the top is too good.

The technical team has done a good job except for the editing.The editing should have been much tighter and the film's length could have been shortened by 10-15 minutes. the cinematography by Shirsha Ray is very nice. The background score and sound design are very appropriate for a suspense thriller.The Visual effects could have been done better specially in a particular sequence where Paoli Dam is getting scared of ghosts in a train compartment the computer graphics looks ridiculous.

There are some songs composed by Anupam Ray which are good but not situational so the songs do not work for the movie.

overall it is a good try for making an unconventional thriller but it could have been made better.