MUMBAI: Ram Gopal Varma’s Agyaat is ready for release. Looking at the promos the film looks like a horror film but Varma says, "It is not like a horror film technically, it’s a unique thriller. It’s about some people caught in some kind of situation and something is out to kill them."
Agyaat is about a film unit that goes for a shoot in a forest and gets lost in a situation and something is out there to kill them. According to Varma, the reason for choosing a film unit is because a film unit is like a walking office where there is a hierarchical difference right from the star to the spot boy etc. In the face of death all those differences get erased and all of them become as human as possible. They fight for their life after that.
Varma says that he likes to make scary movies because he loves to scare people while he has never been scared of anything except for the outcome of many of his films.The most scary experience has been his film Aag. He says that the film still gives him the chills.
Varma says, "For the subject matter of Agyaat, which is about a set of people trapped in a jungle and something out there killing them one by one, I had no intention of showing the entity that is creating the terror. It is imperative that the jungle substitutes for the entity that is killing them."
He adds, "The combination of the psychological aspect and technical angle of trying to create fear and terror just by camera movements and background score and sound effects is what I have attempted in the film."
Though we’ve seen many films like that especially in Hollywood, like the Aliens, Anaconda, Friday the 13th, Predator or The Blair Witch Project, Varma vouches that his film Agyaat is different. He says, "The uniqueness about Agyaat is that you don’t really see what it is that’s killing them and that’s also the reason why I have named my film Agyaat, it’s an unknown element. There is no form to it."
He said that he decided to keep it unknown till the end because he read an interesting interview of Ridley Scott the director of Alien which said, "If you go to a strange place and experience something strange you come and share the thrill of it it’s not necessary you understand what has caused that experience."
Agyaat has been shot in the Sigiriya jungles of Sri Lanka. Varma says, "One might say that a jungle is a jungle but then you have not seen the Sigiriya forest. It almost looks like a wild imagination of a surreal art director. It looks so unreal."
Agyaat stars Priyanka Kothari, earlier known as Nisha Kothari. The film has been made in a budget of Rs 90 million (Rs 9 crores) and is slated to release on 24 July.
