Ezra: Dissecting the Horror

It is not often that a horror movie which has the look and feel of a Hollywood horror flick is made in Malayalam language. So far what we have seen is pretty much the white sari draped vengeful yakshi wailing her woes with a high pitched song, sprouting fangs and bleeding eyes whenever an unsuspecting victim approaches her. I am not saying there is anything wrong in it, but it’s high time that the Malayalam movie industry thought beyond cheap makeup horror which has not changed in decades. The concept of horror movie is quite different for Indians in general, especially Keralites. We saw the same formula even as recently as Vinayan’s Yakshiyum Njanum (2010), Aadupuliyattam (2016) and Pretham (2016). So I was really looking forward to watching Ezra. The theater strike which hit Kerala delayed the releases of major Malayalam movies, which added to the build up.

Ezra is the story of a modern day couple, Ranjan and Priya, moving to a new home in Kochi from Mumbai. Ranjan is in charge of the Kochi operations of a company moving high risk radioactive waste product through the Container Terminal in Vallarpadam. The specificity of his job promptly raised a flag for a plot point later in the movie waiting in ambush. Priya settles into their new home with the help of their maid who had accompanied them from Mumbai. A parallel plot follows the journey of a mysterious box from the Jewish home of one of the last Jewish settlers in Kochi, taken by the owner of a curio shop. The shop owner’s assistant who stays the night at the shop is killed by a mysterious entity originating from the box. His mangled body is later discovered in the morning by the shop owner. The police investigation doesn’t go anywhere due to the lack of clues.

In order to decorate their new home, Priya visits the curio shop and purchases the box. A series of unexplained events take place in the house which makes an initially skeptical Ranjan to take help from his relative who is a catholic priest. He identifies the box and that it contains a Dybbuk which can only be exorcised by a Jewish rabbi. Priya reveals to him that she is pregnant while he is in Mumbai trying to get a Jewish rabbi to exorcise the malevolent spirit. The rabbi warns Ranjan that the dybbuk might latch on to anyone with an unbalanced or unformed mind like his unborn child. The plot continues till the eventual and inevitable exorcism of the spirit. A parallel flash back plot is added to explain the formation of the dybbuk- which visually was passable but with poor acting performances.

Watching Ezra reaffirmed one of my opinions about the horror genre. What constitutes a good horror movie? Is it the occasional jump scare that brings your heart into your mouth and makes you laugh the next second? Or is it the sense of dread that haunts and follows you well after the movie and makes you sweat in the dark while trying to sleep? Ezra is peppered with jump scare moments. My opinion is that jump scares, as fun as they are at that moment, doesn’t really make a horror movie good. You get the same experience in a carnival scary house, but you don’t think about it once you are out of the dark room. A good horror movie should build up a sense of dread in the audience. It should leave the audience uneasy and disturbed while leaving the theater hall. It was this aspect that made me disappointed in Ezra. A horror movie should not be a glorified YouTube compilation of scary pranks.

Ezra has all the stereotypical character tropes- the lead male trying to fight the evil spirit, the evil spirit with a tragic back story, the vulnerable female character and the exorcist/savior figure. When a much awaited Malayalam horror film simply rips off a tried and tested Hollywood formula, the result is disappointing and mediocre. Even though the effort put in by the director and crew is pretty much evident in an otherwise visually well crafted movie, Ezra in the end is supposed to be a horror movie and it is fair that it is analysed as one.

It is good to see a Malayalam movie with really good visuals after a long time, but the fact that they wasted it on a very derivative and predictable story is sad. I am not even getting into the fact that Ezra is pretty much the same story as Possession (2012). The film was marketed as a horror film unlike any seen in Malayalam cinema. But Ezra would have worked better as an adaptation rather than a horror film if the filmmakers had disclosed that the film was a remake of Possession, and retained the basic plot line and visuals from the original while making sure that it contained elements that would blend in with the malayalee psyche.

So is Ezra devoid of anything good to say about? No. There are a few scenes which disturbs the audience while not attempting a jump scare. The images of Priya walking on top of a wall with the severed head of a dog, the mangled body of a curio shop assistant inside a box is seared into the minds of the audience. The sub plot which tells the love story of Abraham Ezra captures the charm of the Jewish settlement and its mercantile history in Kochi. There is also a good piece of CGI in the climax where the soul possessing the protagonist is exorcised, which is probably the best I have seen in a Malayalam movie.

A common argument which my friends often tell me is that you can’t compare Hollywood to Malayalam film industry. At this point I usually point out that Paranormal Activity was produced at one tenth of the budget of Ezra. Can you compare the effectiveness of these two movies? Budget is not always a constraint to creating good movies. In fact Malayalam language and culture is rich with paranormal myths and legends. The makers of this movie had plenty of material to work with. They may not be the same good vs evil themes of a western society originating from a Semitic religion, but it is more than enough to derive inspiration to create excellent horror subjects while not being the cliche evil-spirit-revenge story. Our cultural sources are not explored enough by the film medium.

So is Ezra a good horror film? It is not. At least it is not what its marketing claims to be. It is an average horror movie with a lot of sincere effort put into it. It is good to  see that it did well in the box office. It gives us hope that when a proper horror movie to the likes of The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby and Zodiac (to name a few) is released in Malayalam, it will be well received by the audience.