Pizza 3: The Mummy

Pizza 3: The Mummy is a 2023 Indian Tamil-language horror thriller film directed by Mohan Govind, starring Raveena Daha, Ashwin Kakumanu and Pavithrah Marimuthu. Marking the third film in the Pizza film series, it was released on 28 July 2023 and received average reviews. The film grossed around 5 Crore and was considered a decent hit.

Plot
At the start of the movie, a man comes home with a gift for his daughter, which is a Barbie Doll. His son also finds a camera. The husband then pulls out a mini-mummy sarcophagus statue, a miniature resemblance of the one that of King Tut. His wife jokingly tells him that he is taking too much of these. After some time of taking the a Mummy statue out, the electricity goes out in the house. The wife lights up candles in the house, while the son is recording with the camera. The daughter then asks for a bedtime story. When the dad tries to tell an Indian story of an elephant leg caught in a crocodile's mouth, the second son requests a horror story. The father agrees, ignoring his wife's protests. He tells a story of when he was in 11th or 12th grade, he was playing basketball when one of the players had a stroke. Within a few days, he passes away. Some people say that his spirit goes to the basketball court and bounces a basketball. The second son then tells the father that people said he pushed the player down, causing him to get the stroke. The father gets worried at this comment, makes the first son stop recording puts away the camera, and tells the kids to go to bed. After a few hours, a singing toy mysteriously turns on. The father wakes up to turn it off. When he goes downstairs, he hears the sound of a basketball being bounced. When he takes a flashlight and looks in the mirror, he sees the image of the player he pushed in the reflection but sees nobody in person. After that, the player then hits the father, in which the father dies.

The scene switches to a news program debate where 4 people debate if ghosts exist or not. Among them is a young app developer Kayal who claims she has created an app to converse with spirits. A live demo goes awry. Then one of the debaters speaks about a tiny mummy made by an Egyptian queen who packed all of her kingdom's negative energies in it. Apparently, the mummy can raise negative energy on certain days and is currently located somewhere in Chennai.

As the story continues, we meet Nalan, a restaurant owner who is preparing to ask Kayal's brother for her hand in marriage. Her brother, a police officer, insults him and wants his sister to marry a fashion designer, Aravind, who is financially better off. Nalan returns to his restaurant irritated. We see a customer forgot a small sarcophagus of a Mummy. It is kept on a shelf for the customer to pick up.

Since then, strange things have been happening in the kitchen. The kitchen lights mysteriously turn on, clean utensils are found dirty etc. We see a sweet dish appearing mysteriously in the fridge. The employees sample it and finds it to have a divine taste. Everyone believes Nalan had created it secretly and praise him for the wonderful dish, but Nalan is confused as he did not make it. Throughout the movie, we see this sweet dish mysteriously appearing at multiple scenes.

Nalan meets a man Veera, who hands him the papers of ownership for his restaurant. The man praises Nalan for his hardwork and mentions he deserves it.

Nalan who lives in a small apartment above the restaurant hears a lady crying downstairs at night. He goes down to investigate but doesn't find anyone. He observes the presence of a spirit. Suddenly he gets a phone call, and Veera is on the other line. Veera says he is very hungry and wants something to be delivered to his place. Nalan prepares a meal and delivers it himself. We then see Veera with a girl in his house, after the typical "alone man in the house with a ghost" scenes, we see Veera getting killed. No need to guess, but as per the cliche in cinema, Prem is the investigation officer and he suspects Nalan as he was the one who delivered food to Veera's house. He is summoned for an investigation and he claims innocence. We see Aravind had come to pay his respects to Veera, mentioning Veera is a long time friend of him.

Prem takes Aravind-Kayal marriage proposal to the next level, which irritates Kayal and she wants Nalan to talk to Aravind on their relationship. Seeing Nalan disturbed, his friends decide to spend the evening drinking at his apartment. Nalan goes to talk to Aravind meanwhile. His friends are attacked by the spirit and injured grievously. Nalan saves them and admits them to a hospital. We then understand that Aravind was killed and the suspect of Prem is again Nalan. Kayal confronts Nalan who then confesses that he witnessed a spirit murdering Aravind. Kayal and Nalan decide to investigate who the spirit is with the help of Kayal's app.

The duo speak to a librarian who gives a brilliant idea, that is, to investigate who the previous owner of the restaurant was. Nalan and Kayal find out that it belonged to Mitra, and she along with her Mother were running a sweet shop. They try to find out that the mother daughter duo lived in an apartment and try to visit them. They are stopped by the security and the apartment secretary who bluntly mention they do not live there anymore, the daughter was killed in a gas leak explosion at the sweet store and the mother became insane and left the place thereafter. The security becomes agitated when they show a picture of Aravind. Nalan secretly breaks into Mitra's apartment at night and ruffles through. He sees a picture of him that Mitra had hand drawn and he is shocked. The secretary and the security manage to catch Nalan, but the security is killed in an elevator accident.

A flashback opens. Mitra is shown to be a gifted cook and the mother daughter duo runs the sweat shop, where their specialty is the sweet that was found by Nalan in his fridge. Mitra once travelling in an Autorickshaw stumbles upon Nalan playing cricket. She pencil sketches him in her book out of curiosity. Nalan, who is the batsman, strikes the ball hard and it hits Mitra on her head. Though her life is saved, she develops post traumatic stress related amnesia, rendering her unable to generate new memories. In due course of time, her mother tries very hard to give her a normal life. However Mitra's inability to form new memories are taken advantage of by the watchman who repeatedly rapes her on the lift everyday. Since Mitra is not able to store the incident on her memory, she undergoes the pain each and every day inadvertently. However one day this heinous act is caught by the apartment secretary who thrashes the security. On an evening of celebration, the secretary, his friend Veera (who is also Mitra's maternal uncle), Veera's friend Aravind and the security drug her and rape her. When Mitra's mother finds this out, the gang kills her as well. They take Mitra's body and arranges an accident at the sweet shop that supposedly kill her. They hack the mothers body and bury her in a quarry owned by Veera.

The presence of the Mummy raises the spirits of Mitra and her mother, and they take revenge. This explains the deaths of Veera, Aravind and the security. With another cliche, the apartment secretary tries to escape the spirits with the help of a ghost buster, who ultimately turns out useless. With the last of the perpetrators eliminated, the spirit of Mitra and her mother unite, leaving Nalan for good.

Production
The film was announced publicly on 1 January 2021, with C. V. Kumar revealing that the third film in the Pizza series would be directed by debutant Mohan Govind, and star Ashwin Kakumanu and Pavithrah Marimuthu. After beginning the shoot in February, production on the film was largely completed by July 2021, with the team missing out on the initial release date of March 2021 owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, the team briefly considered releasing the film through a streaming platform.

Further significant portions of the film were shot in a kitchen in Chennai during late 2021.

Release and reception
The film was released on 28 July 2023. Logesh Balachandran from The Times of India wrote it was "a well-made horror thriller that's interesting in bits", adding that "Pizza 3 is a decent addition to the franchise as a one-time watch". K. R. Manigandan of The South First wrote the film was "the best among the franchise" and that "the film has neat performances coming in from all its cast". In contrast, Anusha Sundar from Cinema Express wrote "even the cheap thrills can't salvage this letdown installment under the guise of tugging your emotional strings, Pizza 3 fails to run chills down your spine".