This restraint is also present in the character of a creepy shamanistic doctor played by Rajat Kapoor. He speaks less, and his body language is enough to spread dread. He feels that it was the cinematography and production design which created that effect. “It’s the script and the director that carry you. An actor is a very small part of an image. Unfortunately, actors get a lot of credit, but much of it is due to everyone else behind the camera,” he says. Rajat is also a writer-director himself, known for making off-beat films like Raghu Romeo (2003), Ankhon Dekhi (2014) and RK/RKay (2022), among others. However, he doesn’t feel the directorial experience aids him in his acting process. “It is a different personality altogether. My job as an actor is not to think of the shot and all those things. That’s the director’s job. Why will I take their stress?” he says.Rajat calls the first half of Ram Gopal Varma’s Bhoot (2003) his favourite Indian horror film. Smita agrees, and together they also mention some of the horror films of the Ramsay brothers in the 1980s and 90s which became quite popular. She feels that good horror is not being made these days. “I mean, there isn’t good stuff being made in any genre, and horror is one of them,” she says. Rajat feels that the genre needs reinvention. “Unless you do that, the genre dies as everyone has seen most of it already. There is also a larger social change which makes certain genres irrelevant,” he says, giving an example of Western films of the 1940s, 50s and 60s in Hollywood and how they eventually stopped making them. “Now you can’t make a Western film unless you bring something new to it,” he says. Smita seconds this and adds that there is a huge need for horror films in India, as it allows us to explore many grave things. “It gives you chills and thrills. I was starved for it and hence I wanted to make it,” she concludes.
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