New Delhi, Actor Kajol says she isn’t a fan of horror films and will be watching “Maa”, her own entry in the genre, solely for professional reasons.
“Maa”, directed by Vishal Furia, is the first horror project of Kajol’s career of over 30 years. The movie shares the same universe with the 2023 movie “Shaitaan”, which featured her actor-husband Ajay Devgn.
“I don’t watch horror films. I have watched a lot of big films. I’m not a horror film aficionado at all.
“I haven’t watched ‘Maa’ yet. Only in parts with lots of green screens behind me so that I don’t get scared, and no background music, or anything like that. I really have to watch it, for professional reasons,” the 50-year-old actor told PTI in an interview here.
As an actor, Kajol had initially assumed working on a horror film would be no different from any other genre.
“It was a very interesting experience, actually, it was not something that I had done before. I always assumed working on the horror genre was the same as working in any other film, and I was completely wrong.
“Horror has a pitch when you are acting, and the pitch is completely different from regular movies. It’s not a rom-com, it’s not a love story, or it’s not a drama. Vishal and I used to have long conversations where we were like, ‘no, this is not the pitch. You have to keep it at this pitch.’ And that was really emotionally draining… to keep it at that pitch constantly,” she added.
“Maa” features Kajol as Ambika, a woman leading a happy life with her husband, and daughter Shweta.
When the mother-daughter pair travel to Chandrapur in West Bengal to sell the ancestral bungalow, they confront the eerie traditions and tightly held secrets of the village and are drawn into a chilling web of fear, superstition, and something even darker, according to the official plotline.
Kajol said the movie was initially conceptualised as a tight thriller but during the development process, the makers realised the need to add a horror element to it.
“We didn’t start out to do a horror film… but by the time the script came out, we realised that the characters and situations had become so big, that we needed a bigger platform to do justice to them, and to climax for them.
“As it was, the audience would not have been satisfied if we had come out with a very simplistic ending… it just didn’t leave you that satisfied. So, that’s why we had to attach the horror tag to give it that kind of staging,” she said.
Kajol said her character of Ambika deals with the “basic notion of the parent”, which is to protect her child.
“…and she wants to do everything that she can to protect her child from physical harm,” she said.
At the end, the film turned out to be a learning experience for the actor.
“From doing action, to working with VFX, all of it, and even the dramatic scenes… I love the music of the film, so it all came together really nicely,” she said.
Although Kajol has done a significant number of projects on OTT, including legal drama series “The Trial: Pyaar Kaanoon Dhokha” and suspense thriller “Do Patti”, the actor said nothing beats the charm of watching movies in theatres.
“Cinemas still have magic, somewhere down the line… You just don’t have that same vibe or feel when you’re watching a movie at home. It’s something that only a cinema theatre can give you,” she said.
“Maa” also stars Indraneil Sengupta, Kherin Sharma and Ronit Roy. Presented by Jio Studios and Devgn Films, the film is produced by Jyoti Deshpande and co-produced by Kumar Mangat Pathak.
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