★
A world-weary man's self-imposed home confinement becomes a comedy of errors with the simultaneous arrivals of a peculiar package and a curious journalist
Classification: 12
A film so boring it makes its 100-minute runtime feel like 6 hours, House Arrest is another unfortunate case of Netflix throwing their money at whatever moves into their sightline no matter the quality. It feels I'm making this complaint with almost every one of their new releases but when you want to be taken seriously as a film studio even your garbage needs better production quality than this. A romantic comedy that is neither comedic or romantic, directors Shashanka Ghosh and Samit Basu, Basu also serving as screenwriter take their quirky premise and surgically remove any enjoyment from the film. With the cinematography and production design giving off an unflattering resemblance to a muted multi-cam sitcom, everything about House Arrest is fabricated and mundane.
Revolving around the character of Karan, a social recluse seemingly living as a Hikikomori, a modern form hermit as he has not left his apartment in over six months. His contact limited to deliveries at his front door and impromptu visits from his neighbour Pinky, a ditzy daughter of a crime boss. Most of Karan's interactions are visualised phonecalls where Ghosh and Basu have his best friend J.D and love interest/journalist Saira warp into the room, there's no real visual payoff for this beyond getting both actors in the same shot rather than continuous cutaways. The situational comedy begins when Pinky brings Karan a bright pink suitcase, Pinky whose father is a known criminal has crammed the body of an attempted kidnapper inside the suitcase and needs Karan to look after the body until she can get rid of it. Karan now on edge from this also has to deal with Saira interviewing him about his lifestyle while discovering what he thought was a corpse is now an angry prisoner trapped within his apartment.
The comedy, crime and romance of the story don't blend together at all, with Karan's struggles never reaching any emotional resonance. The chemistry between Ali Fazal as Karan and Shriya Pilgaonkar as Saira is non-existent and the film horribly approaches the ideas behind the crime and romance in the most childish ways. The film clearly wants to adopt some heightened reality where the eccentricities of the characters are seen as amusing but the actual effect is just offputting. It's close-minded to all the notions it wants to implement in its story and makes light of the more serious elements including Karan's isolation and his involvement in a kidnapping. It's very difficult to get invested in any of the storylines due to its below mediocre execution in its story and visuals.
It's a film with nothing on offer as House Arrest traps whatever poor viewer stumbles upon it into its pointless boring collection of humourless setups and awkward melodrama. Terrible acting alongside terrible scripting and directing makes the experience more and more mindnumbing as it goes on, leaving a husk of a disappointed audience behind.
Director: #ShashankaGhosh and #SamitBasu
Cast: #AliFazal, #ShriyaPilgaonkar, #JimSarbh, #BarkhaSingh
Release Date: November 15th 2019
Available exclusively on Netflix
Trailer:
Written review copyright ©CoreyBullochReviews
Images from the Internet Movie Database, Synopsis from Netflix
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