'Pizza 3D' Review: Definitely Not Yummy

IB Times India Rating: 1

The age old question – How does the faint-hearted always end up in a massively haunted place? While an answer is being formulated, director Akshay Akkineni's "Pizza 3D" fails to deliver in 30 minutes.

Regular couple, Kunal (Akshay Oberoi) and Nikita (Parvathy Omanakuttan), are expecting a baby. The husband works as a pizza boy and wifey is trying her luck with writing. Their lives are turned upside down when Kunal is trapped inside an abandoned bungalow, where he goes to deliver smoking hot pizzas.

What follows is very predictable – he runs up and down the creaky stairs, breathes heavily as if his heart were to pop out from his mouth, tip-toes into areas he anticipates trouble in and feels the chill as spirits swiftly pass by. Adventures of pizza man eats into the first segment and it's only after a handful of painstakingly boring episodes that the movie shifts gear and makes Nikki disappear.

After all that classic horror movie hokum, the director punches a weird twist into the latter half of the second segment. And then, it almost makes one feel funny for feeling fear (even if it were for a split second).

With splashes of violence and a mild sense of fear, this supernatural thriller is a half-baked attempt at remaking hit Tamil film "Pizza". What's more worrisome than the mediocre performances is the film's desperation to scare people out of their wits.

Even after adding tried-and-tested spook elements – squeaking door hinges, a baby girl who walks on all four (inside out), dim-lights and the enlightening torch, "Pizza 3D" hardly ever finds the audience grappling with any kind of unsettling fear.

The screenplay is haphazard and confuses the viewers for most part. It never creates an element of thrill the film promised in its trailer.

The background score (by Tamil musician Krishna Kumar) tries its best to tap into people's fears with whooshing wind and ringing wind chimes, but fails to pepper the experience with long-lasting chills. The music of the film is forgettable and the dialogues range mostly from "Mujhe iss ghar se bachao" to "Main iss ghar mein phasa hua hoon".

Dipannita Sharma and Arunoday Singh, as the axed couple were just-about believable, but don't give the jitters. While Akshay delivered a near-average performance and looked more scared than he actually should be, Parvathy was barely there as the supportive significant other.

The film is called "3D" probably just to avoid any kind of copyright infringement. And the glasses were nothing more than a fashion statement.

This one's a diet pizza with little or no topping.