Nushrat Bharucha's 'Chhori' filmmaker Vishal Furia opens up on his love for horror genre

New Delhi: Filmmaker Vishal Furia is ready to entice viewers with his horror flick 'Chhori' starring Nushrat Bharucha. He feels horror is a space that is left wide open by filmmakers in the country. His film is a Hindi remake of the 2017 hit Marathi venture 'Lapachhapi'. 

“Horror is such a strong genre because the impact remains with the audience for life and yet when I left the broadcasting industry to join the film industry, I found a gaping hole in this category. I realised no one is doing justice to it and felt I could contribute, that is why I started writing Lapachhapi,” said Vishal.

After opening to packed Marathi audiences in 2017, the award-winning Lapachhapi finds its new Hindi avatar with Nushrat Bharucha in the lead.

The young director is expectedly excited to recapitulate his run after the unprecedented success of the Marathi version. 

“When it came to Lapachhapi, I had to strategically scale down my production given the budget constraints and limit the intensity of the film. But with the Hindi remake, we can scale-up the scares and now with Abundantia and LA-based Crypt TV onboard - both of them who understand horror extremely well, we can go all the way,” says an excited Vishal. Chhori is being jointly produced by Abundantia’s Vikram Malhotra and Crypt TV’s Jack Davis.

The Marathi version with Pooja Sawant and Vikram Gaikwad in lead roles was the first of sorts for the Marathi moviegoer as well. While Marathi folk tales and stories are often entwined with elements of horror, a full-length movie in the genre had been missing for years. 

“The movie did well. A year before it was released, it got selected to 20 international film festivals where it mostly won. We released the movie in July 2017 and it stayed on in the theatre for 11 weeks due to amazing audience demand. All this, after shooting the movie in 15 days flat,” reveals Vishal.

Influenced in parts by Stanley Kubrick, Polanski, Spanish and Japanese horror movies, he now eagerly awaits to see how Hindi audience reacts to his craft.