Starring: Shantanu Maheshwari, Tanya Maniktala, Tillotama Shome, Sikandar Kher, Saswata Chatterjee, Revathi, Adil Hussain, Anjan Dutta, Chitrak Bandopadhyay
Direction: Pratim Dasgupta
'Tooth Pari: When Love Bites', now streaming on Netflix, is a horror series about Vampire-Human love. Yet in the entire series of 8 episodes, the word 'Vampire' gets mentioned only once. If this is not enough to convince you that this series is far removed from the 'The Twilight Saga' cliché, read on.
English films have experimented with and mastered Vampire movies for decades now from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula' (1992) to 'Dracula Untold' (2014); 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' (1992) to 'The Twilight Saga' film series (2008 to 2012), vampire movies have become a cult, a genre with strongly defined grammar. To venture into this world with a limited budget for an Indian web series needs courage. Pratim Dasgupta, in his series' Tooth Pari: When Love Bites', does that and more. His expertise in this subject is evident in how he has bent the rules of classic Vampire movies and yet come across a winner.
The story follows a beautiful Vampire, Rumi (Maniktala), who rebels against the rule of her world and often ventures into the human territories to get the taste of fresh blood. Yet, she doesn't defy their moral code of not killing any human or converting them. Instead, she 'deep-hyp' them (read hypnotised by biting) to forget all about the encounter. However, she accidentally bites a prosthetic neck and breaks one of her canines (fangs). She visits a shy dentist (Maheshwari) and falls in love. This leads to the collision of the two worlds of humans and vampires, upar and nichey, which was being balanced and taken advantage of by AD (Hussain) with politician-like sly until then.
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Set in the backdrop of Kolkata, the blending of local culture, folklore, and even Bengal's history of Naxalite movements makes this vampire series stand out. And it has been done superbly, bringing the flavour of 'Dracula Untold' (2014) into this series. So we come across the ‘katmundus’, and their leader Luna Luka (Revathi). She is the arch nemesis of Rumi and all the vampires, although her character hasn't been developed well, except that her name in Italian means light of the moon.
We also see some impressive creative concepts weaved into this series to bring another unique quotient. In an advanced vampire world, nichey (underground), characterised by a blood bar to sit and sip on stocked-up blood that AD supplies frozen from his hospital, ready for consumption, the vampires also get to play video games and slumber inside sleeping pods. These concepts are established early on in the series, and from then on, you're hooked within this fantasy world and continue binging till it's over.
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However, a strange mix of Bengali and Hindi language in dialogues makes for a jarring and disconcerting experience initially, but then you would learn to overlook this. There have been a lot of superhit Hindi movies involving Bengal and its people without losing any of its cultural essences. I keep wondering what made Dasgupta decide to use a mixed-language format. Also, amid so much creative flair, was it necessary to include Harry Potter's platform pillar entry in our Kolkata Maidan metro? Really!
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Nevertheless, the series is not a bad watch overall, and here's hoping Dasgupta will overcome the minor faults in the next season and make 'Tooth Pari' the best Indian vampire series ever.