Film: "Warning"; Cast: Santosh Barmola, Suzana Rodrigues, Varun Sharma, Manjari Phadnis, Jitin Gulati, Sumit Suri and Madhurima Tulii; Director: Gurmmeet Singh; Rating: **
Water a waste of time! Slasher movies work best on terra-firma where girls in a state of disrobed desperation make a dash for safety. Alas, here the characters have nowhere to run to. Neither do we.
In "Warning", the entire slasher genre is shifted to the aqua splendour of the Fijian water where true to its genre, characters start getting killed/wounded/slashed/maimed.
The ladies of this uproariously funny slasher movie get to wear swimwear most of the time. No censor objection since they are in the water. And surely you can't swim in a burqa!
But yes, you can get killed in the azure acres of silence. Water runs deep when it is marred by killer fish.
Koi shark?!
The 3D format is used here in a strangely eccentric and miserly way. When you expect the water to surge towards you, there is just a flat silence on the screen. You are left wondering why those silly glasses were required in the first place.
Sigh, "Life of Pi" in the high seas, was so much more eloquent. Here, the water just seems to invite violence and not of a very convincing kind. The young actors seem to be in it for the all-expenses paid Fijian holiday with a bit of amateur shooting thrown in to legitimise the vacationing costs.
Everyone connected with the film does a lazy, if not altogether a lousy job. I do like to encourage new talent. And I'd like to give these newcomers the benefit of the doubt. There is very little plot only a whole lot of deep water to sink one's teeth and other body parts in. The intended tension gets suffocating after 20 minutes.
And 3D be damned!
How much and how many times can you watch the actors jump into the deep end without losing their bearings? Some of the intended terror is plainly bland. And worse when you are supposed to be trembling in fear, you actually find yourself shaking with laughter.
Very honestly there are seeds of a killer thriller somewhere in this watery mess. But what to do? While leaving for their Fijian holiday, the crew forgot to take along the script.
Be warned. Undersea thrillers don't work. Anthony D'Souza's mega-disastrous "Blue" should've been warning enough. The last and only really successful water scare-fest was Steven Spielberg's "Jaws".
This one comes too late and with too little, in fact, almost nothing to offer.
If you like horror films please watch ground level slasher films. If you dig girls in bikinis please watch "Baywatch".
But if you like to torture yourself with mid-ocean inertia, you know where to go!
