Sai Pallavi's 'Karu' - Looks like asusal Horror film based on the released trailer.
Sai Pallavi's 'Karu' - Looks like as usual Horror film based on the released trailer.
Pregnancy and abortion have always been
of interest to the horror genre.
The trailer for Sai Pallavi's Karu has
gone viral. The clip begins with the definition of abortion and goes on to give
us a hint about what's to come in the film. From the looks of it, the character
that Sai Pallavi plays gets pregnant and is forced to abort the fetus by her
family. She then gets married and the aborted fetus comes back to haunt the
family as a little girl.
This is, of course, only a guess based
on what we see in the trailer.
Pregnancy and abortion have been common
tropes in the horror genre. From the Western classic Rosemary's Baby to the
recently released Prithviraj-Priya Anand film Ezra to the Siddharth-Andrea
starrer Aval, the pregnant woman and what she carries within has always been a
subject that's of interest to the genre. The Malayalam film Kana Kanmani, a
remake of the Hindi film Gauri: The Unborn was about an aborted fetus who tries
to kill the child her parents eventually have.
Despite advancement in the medical
field which allows us to look into the uterus and monitor the fetus very
closely, the appeal of an "unknown" evil incubating within a woman's
body has not disappeared. The announcement of pregnancy in a horror film always
comes with a sense of foreboding (in the thriller genre, it's a sign that the
character will die - films like Solo and Theeran Adhigaaram Ondru are recent
examples). It brings up the question of whether the mother should continue with
the pregnancy or abort the "evil" inside her - most times, the mother
triumphs and somehow saves the fetus.
Although India has among the most
liberal laws when it comes to abortion (not to be confused with female
feticide), in comparison to other countries, the act is often equated to murder
on screen. This is true of films that don't belong to the horror genre as well.
In the Malayalam film Take Off, for
instance, when Sameera (Parvathy) wants to abort her fetus because she's in a
very difficult position in her personal and professional space, Shaheed
(Kunchacko Boban) tells the doctor that he's unwilling to let her "kill
the baby" and insists that she continue with the pregnancy. And she does.
Even if the character may not be
married to the man in question, abortion is still unlikely to be shown as a
choice a woman makes on screen. Be it Sindhu Bhairavi, Paa, Kaatru Veliyidai,
or Arjun Reddy, the woman decides to keep the fetus.
In the Tamil film Aadhalal Kadhal
Seiveer, which is about a college girl who gets pregnant, the character does
consider abortion seriously but she eventually keeps the fetus. In the
Malayalam film Utharam, a gangrape victim becomes pregnant and later kills
herself when she finds out that the child who was moved to an orphanage has
become a ragpicker.
Films like Ayutha Ezhuthu, where a
woman makes the choice to abort the fetus (she does it in anger against her
husband who refuses to give up his violent ways), are rare. In Kuttram 23,
which is a medical scam in the field of fertility, a woman who was impregnated
with another man's sperm decides to go in for an abortion but is murdered.
Abortion is an important reproductive
right, especially in a country where women's access to contraception faces many
constraints. It is not an easy choice for most women to make and many suffer
from guilt for years. However, despite it being legal, women who want to abort
an unwanted pregnancy come under intense scrutiny and judgment by society and
even the medical fraternity. The vilification of abortion on screen is a
reflection of this and also reiterates the perception.
It will be interesting to see how AL
Vijay has handled the issue in Karu. Hopefully, the film will take the various
aspects of abortion and pregnancy into consideration even as it plays up these
familiar tropes of the horror genre.
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