Pari
- Director
- Prosit Roy
- Studio
- Clean Slate FilmzKriArj Entertainment
- Release Date
- 1 March 2018
- Running Time
- 134 min
- Language
- Hindi
- Country
- India
- Budget
- ₹30.00 Cr
- Box Office
- ₹41.40 Cr
Review
Anushka Sharma's *Pari* is a film that dares to venture into genuinely unsettling territory, and director Prosit Roy deserves credit for maintaining an oppressive, suffocating atmosphere throughout. The premise—rooted in real historical horror from Bangladesh—could have been exploitative, but instead Roy treats the material with a somber gravity that borders on tragic. Sharma delivers a performance of remarkable vulnerability and strangeness; Rukhsana isn't simply a victim to be pitied, but a deeply fractured person whose psychological disintegration feels tragically authentic. The film's willingness to sit with discomfort rather than rush toward convenient resolutions is admirable, even when it becomes narratively murky.
Where *Pari* stumbles is in its narrative coherence. The blending of psychological horror with supernatural elements sometimes feels more confused than intentional, and the love triangle involving Parambrata Chatterjee's Arnab never quite justifies itself thematically—it reads more as plot machinery than emotional necessity. The film also struggles with pacing in its final act, where ambition seems to outpace execution. That said, Roy's visual language is consistently compelling, wrapping the story in gray rain-soaked cinematography that mirrors Rukhsana's internal chaos.
This is imperfect cinema that swings boldly, and while it doesn't always land, the attempt at something serious and disturbing—in an industry often content with comfortable narratives—car
Storyline
So there's this really creepy cult in Bangladesh called Auladhchakra that's obsessed with this demon named Ifrit and they do these absolutely horrifying things to women to try to create demon offspring. There was this professor named Qasim Ali who basically became a vigilante to stop them by hunting down the women and killing the babies in the most brutal way possible. Eventually people got so disturbed by his methods that his whole operation fell apart, but not before the damage was done to so many families.
Now, Rukhsana is a girl who's actually the daughter of one of those victims—her mom managed to escape before the professor could get to her. Then we've got Arnab, this guy who runs a printing business and is supposed to marry a nurse named Piyali in an arranged marriage setup. One night, Arnab and his family accidentally hit an old woman with their car during a terrible rainstorm, and when she dies, the police discover Rukhsana chained up in the woman's forest hut like some kind of prisoner.
Arnab feels really bad about the whole situation and decides to let Rukhsana stay with him since she's completely alone in the world. But here's the thing—Rukhsana is totally disconnected from modern life and keeps having these disturbing visions that seem demonic in nature. Even though she's clearly messed up from her past, Arnab starts developing feelings for her too, and she ends up falling hard for him. It's this weird mix of compassion and attraction that sets everything in motion.
