R Balki’s Chup: Revenge Of The Artist

R Balki’s slasher movie ‘Chup: Revenge Of The Artist’ is equivalent parts fascinating and equally parts horrifying. In this meta-Esque ‘Chup’, R Balki pens a love note to Hindi cinema and also emphasizes the love-hate connection that creators share with movie critics who with their writing and judgment can make it break a movie and the hard work that runs behind making it.

R Balki‘s Chup: Revenge of the Artist has been released in theatres today, i.e. 23th September 2022. The filmmaker held a screening for the movie’s cast — Pooja Bhatt, Dulquer Salmaan, Shreya Dhanwanthary, Sunny Deol, and — and their families and friends from the movie fraternity earlier this week.

Chup: Revenge of the Artist is gaining mostly positive reviews from the audiences as the movie was first shown to audiences before critics in a few cities in India. Yes, you read that right!

This movie was recently screened for the first time for the audience before the analysts. The free audience screening was held across 10 Indian cities.

All the tickets were booked within 10 minutes of its beginning. The idea behind this action was in line with the movie’s theme which tells the tale of a dissatisfied artiste, who turns into a serial killer after his work is panned by the critics.

“Chup: Revenge of the Artist” director stated that “What I thought was that when you want to show people a film, or any product for that matter, like a chair, you display your product. I felt people can just watch the film and have their opinion.”

Written by Balki himself who has co-written the screenplay with Raja Sen(film critic) and Rishi Virmani, ‘Chup’ pulls motivation from Guru Dutt’s last film- a failure known as ‘Kagaz Ke Phool’ and ‘Pyaasa’ — another flop and uses it as an analogy on several occasions.

I think we need such movies.