Pihu Review - 'Child Lock'ed

Here’s the cold, hard truth: a person left alone in a house can either be hilarious, case in point, Home Alone or it can be masterfully portrayed and hauntingly quiet, as in the case of Trapped. Pihu is a traumatising tale of a two year old, left alone in a Noida high rise duplex apartment. Pihu, the titular protagonist, is an unassuming little child who is left to encounter twenty-first century horrors. So as Kevin McAllister battled two hilariously incompetent goons, the main villain here is a geyser, a hot iron and believe it or not - a microwave.

We watch, with bated breath, as Pihu trudges along the house, causing destruction - of course, without knowing it herself. But, for one and a half hours, it is just too much of a clenched stomach and a nauseating sickness, that instead of being horrifying, Pihu is torturous. The film would’ve worked brilliantly as a short, but director Vinod Kapri insists that we place our trust in him and two-year-old Myra Vishwakarma, who plays Pihu. Myra is a fine little girl, obviously she’s not acting, but Pihu is emotionally-ridden and springs to life just when we need her to. It’s a hell of a thing, keeping an audience hooked for 95 minutes - and Myra does it with aplomb, even as the film around her tortures the hell out of its audience. Because, after the first 20 minutes, you’re done as Kapri keeps rolling out more obstacles for Pihu to face. At one point, she takes the same drugs that her mother has overdosed on and swallows them with her jam sandwich. In another scene, she empties out bleach into her milk bottle, saying, “Dudoo pilu?”

In fact, every time Pihu eats one of her mother’s pills, she asks her, “Goli khaloo?” It’s almost as if Kapri is directly taunting us, and the manipulation is supremely evident, especially in a scene where Pihu hangs off a balcony calling out to her friends. There are also glimpses of the outside world, though they’re brief. Whilst Pihu hangs off the balcony, a concerned neighbour sees this from her own balcony and reasons with the child to get off. She says that she’s just coming over, but this neighbour is never seen again. The storytelling is too convenient - in a manipulative way, and it is intentionally enshrouded in this sombre quality of helplessness.

And there’s really only so much an audience can forgive. In the screening I was at, many people walked out of Pihu in its first hour, because it is too disturbing. And yet unlike other films that are gory to watch, including Love Sonia (2018) and Lakshmi (2014), it’s unnecessary and doesn’t match the fabric of the story. What Rajkummar Rao did in Trapped, which is carry an entire film with minimal dialogues and only one character, is just too much to place in the hands of an unassuming little girl. The film is unmistakably exploitative and after a point, repetitive. There are unnecessary intercuts of neighbours yelling lewd things, while Pihu’s father makes an appearance every five minutes, always on the phone and shouting.

There’s only so much one can take of this. And having watched the horrific climax, where literally everything is up in flames, there was only one thought in my mind - why are we watching this film? It isn’t a particularly good thriller, except for the brilliant Myra, who is at once natural and heartbreaking. And neither does it give us any insight into what not to do. What Pihu is is an overtly deceitful ride that exploits a mere two-year old so that it can revel in the fact that it has made its audiences flinch at the expense of the two-year-old girl at the centre of it all.

Apart from being absolutely unnecessary, Pihu also has weird sidetracks that it never commits to. There’s an alleged mistress who is only known by the name, ‘Bitch’ and a continuous fight between the parents that takes place over the phone. Also, the father is shown as a bit of a dud, having figured out what’s going on, pretty late into the film. After a point, the audience stops watching with bated breath, and starts gasping for air … waiting for Pihu to be over. I know that I ran out of the cinema, waiting for the colours of the world to come back.

Pihu isn’t designed to be anything but an aimless exercise in absurdity. Yes, a two-year old alone in a minefield of horrors is intriguing cinema, but the product is so haphazard and ill-intentioned, that it just can’t be your cup of tea.

This is not a film. It is torture.