Raaz: Reboot could have been the perfect antidote to Hashmi’s box office woes. It had the legacy of the Raaz franchise, which has proven to be a money-spinner in the past for the Bhatts, to draw on. But it too has come up short.
Instead, you shake with laughter that is entirely unintended. Because Rahaan(Gaurav Arora) and his pretty wife Shaina(Kriti Kharbanda), and a shadowy blast from her past Aditya(Emraan Hashmi) spend all their time talking thusly: ‘kuch toh raaz hai’, ‘kya raaz hai’, ‘kahin toh raaz chhupa hai’, ‘yeh raaz hamein alag kar dega’, over and anon, till this purported ‘raaz’ starts coming out of our ears, but refuses to come in front of our eyes.
Nothing changes in the fourth of the Raaz franchisee. If at all the chills and thrills seem to run dangerously out of steam and some scenes turn out unintentionally funny. Like when Kriti Kharbanda, sprawled naked on the dining table, says huskily, with fake intensity, that she is feeling hot, “so* hot”(in minus ten degrees) the whole theatre tittered in unison. I laughed again when she recited Tagore in faux Bengali: “What strange path led you to me.”
PS: Emraan Hashmi doing mouth-to-mouth we can deal with even if it is ultra-familiar. But Hashmi in a man bun? Now that’s apt for a horror film.