Zid - A review

The latest movie that I saw was a shabbily made psychotic thriller, Zid, which is about an obsessed lover, Maya (played by Mannara Chopra, Parineeti Chopra's cousin). With a gripping plot in place, the movie had some mettle initially and it did keep me hooked until the interval but thereafter the story became quite predictable and poor acting coupled with some mediocre screenplay made it plain boring and could induce only yawns. Its anti-climax made things even worse. Zid was apparently inspired by the English movie "The Good Neighbour" but it hardly had anything in common with the English movie. Instead I felt like Zid was more of a hotch-potch of "Poison Ivy" and "Wild Things".

Karanvir Sharma plays the character of Rohan Achrekar, a crime reporter for a Goa daily. He has an estranged girlfriend Priya (Shradha Kapoor) who doesn't respond to his calls and emails and so he decides to move on with his life. He starts by changing his house and so looks for a new house to take his mind off the bad memories of his recent breakup. Veteran actor Mohan Kapoor who plays his editor's role, suggests him an outhouse in the woods and Rohan complies. While going to the place, he sees a beautiful girl by the beach and clicks her photos from the boat. Little does he know that the same girl (Mannara Chopra) would turn out to be his house's owner, Maya. In no time, they become good friends. Meanwhile Mannara gets smitten by Rohan and starts obsessing about him. Then it so happens that while returning home from a party on a stormy night, their car hits someone on a scooter. Being scared they both run away from the spot leaving the girl to die but later on it turns out that the girl whom they had left to die was none other than Priya's sister Nancy. More murders follow and also grows Maya's obsession for Rohan.

Regarding the performances, Karanvir Sharma was okay (though he needs some polishing) but Mannara Chopra didn't look the part at all. Apart from her erotic dreamy sequences, she looked very cold and could hardly impress. Regarding the character of a female obsessed lover, I can think of a better example than Urmilla Matondkar who had played the role to perfection in "Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya". This movie too required that sort of a performance. Sadly Mannara could enact that well and lacked intensity. The movie's narrative rested on the lead actress's performance but Mannara instead looked very synthetic with her expressions, acting and dialogue delivery. Mannara does look good onscreen but she lacks the charisma of her famous cousin Parineeti. May be she will attain that with experience. Shradha Das hardly had any screen space but she still did good even in her minuscule role.

The background score was no doubt chilling but the stereotypical depressing setting of gloomy and ever-raining days and nights, coupled with dark settings actually put me off. The screenplay too lacked pace and intensity that's needed in a thriller movie and there was hardly any suspense. So the movie couldn't impress me at all.