Happy Birthday Review - A Spiritual Mystery With An Emotional Twist

Prasad Kadam's short film, Happy Birthday, stars Anupam Kher and Aahana Kumra in the lead roles. The 18-minute short is a mystery with a spiritual touch, followed by emotional entanglement and a shocking twist that one could have hardly expected to come like this. Happy Birthday is such a happy title, but the film is far from that. There is no happiness at all; rather, there is pain and sentimental unhappiness. The short film format is such that it doesn't give you enough space to explore your story, and some fluke can't save you until you can get the context right. Happy Birthday is a miss when we speak about exploring the content, but it does not miss the context getting the justification.The short starts off with a lady entering a house, and the pan camera, with pauses, does remind you of a horror show. Ratoo (Anupam Kher) is living all alone in his mansion, but he has a special talent for communicating with dead people and also offers spiritual counselling to those who need it. Knowing that, Beth (Aahana Kumra) visits Ratoo to seek help about her dead son. Beth is suffering a mental trauma as she feels guilty for her son's death. So now she wants to know whether her son really hates her or not. Her desperation is so high that, despite the suspectful behaviour of Ratoo, she decides to stay at his house for a while. Ratoo, who has a special power of automatic writing, finally gives her all the answers she was looking for, and then they get engaged in spiritual and deep conversations about life and death. Ratoo then asks her to join a 'happy birthday' celebration, which isn't a happy one by far. What is that? Get your answer in the ending.Happy Birthday is a nasty script. There's something really chilling and shocking about the ending twist, which takes the narrative in a new direction. The screenplay doesn't add many characters or layers, keeping it very simple. There are only two characters (one more comes in the end), so basically, it's just too simple a world to get involved in. The idea of two different mindsets is the real killer here, while the atmosphere sticks to one theme. Happy Birthday has a fine storyline to keep you hooked for 18 minutes, but when it ends, you feel that it should have been longer. You see a certain potential that writers and screenwriters have missed here.Anupam Kher's performance is a real thing to watch here. First, he would look too simple and easy, but then there are different shades to his character. From a simple counsellor, he turns into an emotional speaker and then an evil minded trickster. That's more than what you can expect from an old man (the character, I mean). Aahana Kumra excels in emotional scenes after a slow start. Her character graph remains the same, though she has emotional breakdown moments to lift things up. I would have loved to see some mystery around her character, just like it was with Anupam Kher. The little girl, Aashi Mickey, hasn't got anything to act on, so let's skip this talk and come to final words. Prasad Kadam's presentation of a devious, mysterious tale is nothing extraordinary, but fair enough to be seen at once. Whoever would have imagined a thriller like this under this title? Prasad believed it, and more importantly, he made use believe it.