A movie that is a
worthy successor to “Haunted”!
The category is not pure horror, but “entertainment” horror. If you are looking for classical horror
movies, don’t see this one. But if you like the “other type of classic” movies –
ones that you can look back on and say “I survived this one”, then this is for
you.
Story Summary:
Not much. A fading
movie star Shanaya Shekhar (Bipasha Basu) wants to ruin a rising one - Sanjana
Krishna (Esha Gupta) to become number 1 again. When “normal” means fail,
she resorts to taking the help of black magic.
A film director Aditya
Arora (Emran Hashmi) who is in love with Shanaya and owes her his career
becomes an unwilling accomplice in making the black magic work on Sanjana. In
the process, he (naturally) falls in love with Sanjana and tries to help her.
Vikram Bhatt throws
the kitchen sink at the audience in trying to scare them. Unfortunately, the
sink has rotted and rusted and the only danger that it can pose is a case of
tetanus. The film’s attempts at ghoulishness remind you of Ramsay brothers.
Blood running out of taps, grotesque creepy characters making “Grudge” like
noises, a slimy creature moving around, you name it and the film has it. Vikram
even throws in Ganapati Bappa as a last resort (in the hope that maybe He will
be able to salvage the story).
The central theme of
the movie is that an evil spirit – Tara Dutt (Manish Choudhary) gives Shanaya some
magic water that will help possess Sanjana’s spirit. The water has to be given
to her by someone she trusts. Since the corner stone of the movie is so corny,
you know what to expect.
In keeping with the
Bhatt tradition, Vikram has thrown in a lot of erotic scenes. However, they are
pretty badly written and directed and so fail to make much of an impact. The
music of the film is surprisingly below par for a Bhatt film.
The dialogues of
this film definitely deserve an award. Samples:
·
“Science jism ko janta hai, aatma ko nahi”
(reminding the audience that Bips starred in Jism)
·
“Yeh meri jagah hai, Bhagwan ki nahi”
(reminds you of your boss)
·
“Ek raaz tumhare andar bhi hai...ek raaz mere
andar bhi hai jo tumhe kahin ka nahi chodega” (I know what you ate last
night)
·
“Jo khak se aya hai vo khak me mil jata hai” (reminds you of what the film will become)
And the award goes
to:
v
“If you love me, you can be stupid for me”
(intended for the audience?)
What works for the
film is the slickness in direction and the performances.
Vikram Bhatt has a
good command over the medium and his direction is slick. The 3-D effects
deserve a special mention for being quite good.
Esha gives a decent
performance (when she is not shrieking). For a newcomer, she has managed to
hold her own quite well.
Manish Choudhary
gives a good try at being an evil spirit. He is handicapped by the screen play.
When you have to make growling noises while alternating between a maggot
infested look and a flour-dosed one, it kind of handicaps you. But he tries
manfully and does succeed to a large extent.
Emran gives a good performance
as usual (when he is not in the mandatory erotic scenes). His acting has grown
better by leaps and bounds. He portrays Aditya as a very human character who
becomes an unwilling accomplice and then tries to back out after he realizes
what it actually is doing to Sanjana.
Bipasha is also good
in this movie. She also struggles with having to spout corny dialogues and the
forced evil laughter. But otherwise she conveys the intensity of the character
and the emotions that drive her pretty well. She is one of the highlights of
the film.
In short, see this
for entertainment. If you are looking for a classic ghoulish movie, this is not
it :-).
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