Say Boo!

He gave us Phoonk in 2008 and he's back with Agyaat in 2009. Director Ram Gopal Varma analyses what makes us break into a cold sweat

He gave us Phoonk in 2008 and he's back with Agyaat in 2009. Director Ram Gopal Varma analyses what makes us break into a cold sweat

"Recently someone asked me, 'Why do you make horror films?' I said, 'I love scaring people.' Just to put a group of people in a theatre, close the doors, shut out the lights and scare the hell out of them obviously gives you a kick. When I watched Bhoot at Eros, I stood somewhere in the back. When the girl Manjeet appears under the staircase, the whole theatre jumped up. Imagine the kind of high you get as a director it's almost like a mass hypnosis was conducted on them!

"A film is divided into a story, drama, characters and the usage of the background score, camera and sound. All the applications come to a peak in a horror film. That's because you're arousing an emotion, fear, without anything actually being there. This is why you see in Hollywood that many top directors have dabbled in horror.
(Francis Ford) Coppola made Dracula, Steven Spielberg made this little known TV film called Something Evil and so did Brian De Palma (Carrie, Sisters). The whole point of making a horror was about using the tools of the medium.

My first horror moments

"I remember the first time I saw The Exorcist in a town in Andhra Pradesh called Rajahmundry. I was about 20 years old. I travelled for about 60 kms in a bus from one town to another because at the time, that was the only place with a theatre screening it. I couldn't sleep for a week after seeing that. When I came back home, everyone looked like a ghost to me, even my cousins.

"The first horror films I saw were that of the Ramsay Brothers, but I also watched those Dracula movies. The two scariest films I ever saw were The Exorcist and the Ramsay Brothers film Do Ghar Zameen Ke Neeche, which I saw when I was much younger. I remember getting off the bus and there was a graveyard in the middle of a short-cut to my home. But just to avoid that, I walked three kilometers extra. My biggest revenge on what the Ramsay Brothers did to me was when years later, they came to me and asked me to produce a horror for them!

"Horrors require performances far greater than ordinary films. The audience is reacting to the actor on screen. The actors have to make those scenes believable. The blood coming from a tap is the same, but the expression of the actor is what makes one a high-grade horror and the other a low-grade one. That's why The Blairwitch Project looks high-grade, because of the performances. If you only looked at production values, it's probably the cheapest horror ever made. The reason why even children look at TV horror shows as comedy is because of the acting.

It's like a con job

"But special effects and techniques do add to horror. My new film Agyaat is more a psychological thriller than a horror; it isn't about the supernatural, but there is something killing you out there. The movement of the camera and equipment creates a surrealistic experience. You try to shoot from angles that the normal human eye can't see. You're transported into that mind state. You feel uncomfortable and tense.

"In Bhoot, the moment Urmila (Matondkar) wakes up, you know something is going to happen. The obvious shot is to go behind her. But I didn't want you to expect that fear. So I had this wide shot that showed the whole apartment. The audience had time to see their eyes were darting all over the apartment. There's nothing. As she comes up, you see behind her and she sees in front, so you think she's safe. You relax. Then as she crosses, you see Manjeet. It was the equivalent of saying, 'BOO!'

"Cameras, sound and music are constantly used to manipulate your state of mind. It's almost like a magician playing tricks on your mind. It's like a con job.

Women, children scary

"If you see earlier films, women were always the ghosts. One girl in a white saree, singing a song (invariably by Lata Mangeshkar) and walking into the forest. That was the first horror image in my mind. The ghungroo, a clock ticking, the door creaking these were the iconic sounds of horror. Women are ghosts because they're beautiful and you want to protect them. It's the same reason why children as ghosts are scary. You want to protect them, but they present the danger. Suppose you're sleeping alone at home. The doorbell rings at 3 am. You can't understand why someone would come at 3 am. You open the door and there's a small child sitting on the floor, looking at you with intensity. That will scare the hell out of you.

"I also have a problem seeing identifiable faces as ghosts. Audiences are caught between recognising someone and feeling the fear. Aliens director Ridley Scott once said, if you go to a strange place and experience something strange, it's better you don't understand it. Understanding cuts the fear psychosis; telling stories makes a horror weak. A horror should just be a certain incident stretched. You remember moments from horrors, not stories."

Ramu's top horrors

RGV reveals what struck him the most about these eternal scare-a-thons:

> The EXORCIST: It's probably the only horror film with very little gore. It isn't like a Friday The 13th. You never see the antagonist killing someone. What's incredible about it is that there's a suburban family like yours and mine and something happens to that child. The child is possessed. The mother can't run or scream for help. Her child itself is a victim.

> The Shining: A hotel is like this luxury space; it's almost like a modern-day heaven. You least expect it as a horror film setting. That heaven, that space starts weighing down on the psychological of one man and how he becomes deranged and a threat to his own family.

> Dual: It's again about loneliness. If you go on the highway, you often see trucks like the one in Dual u2014 bumper loose, the windshield so dirty you can't see the driver. It seems like a monster. It struck our natural fear of vehicles that seemed like rogues. Dual took it to the extreme.

> Evil Dead: It was very scary when I saw it first, in a video parlour. The idea of a group of people who rouse a spirit, friends turning to foes and killing each other. That aspect is chilling. There is a difference though between gore and horror. You want to turn your face from gore. Evil Dead has plenty of that. It was terrifically made, but it turns me off.

> The Poltergeist: Again, a family like yours and mine. The fact that a ghost could go into a TV set. I think that was beginning of fear of the media (laughs)!

> Ju-On (The Grudge): I prefer the original to the Hollywood version. Korean and Japanese horrors work on realism. Hollywood screws them up with its production values, takes away the rawness.
If you see Ju-On or Ju-On 2, you won't be able to sleep! They have small budgets and rely on performances and ideas. They have this obsession with hair u2013 it may be something to do with Japanese or Korean culture.

> The Blairwitch Project: I was in New York at the time and saw this ad in a newspaper. 'Three students went to do a documentary on the legend of the Blair Witch. Months later, their footage was found.' These two lines sold the film to me and the entire world. It got a bigger opening than a Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut. That is the power of the idea. To create the feeling that it could have happened, to reconstruct it all from the video footage. That idea happens once in a lifetime.

> Rosemary's Baby: It may have worked when it came out but like The Omen, it doesn't scare me anymore. Rosemary's Baby didn't have same effect as later horrors.
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> Amityville Horror: Technically, the horror genre came from haunted houses. The larger the space, the more vulnerable you feel. In smaller houses, the ghost has to sit next to you. The climax comes too fast. The larger the house, the more you stretch the drama. The first Amityville Horror first came in 1972 and the last version couple of years ago. It's an idea that's worked so long.

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