Fourth instalment from Raaz franchise, and we thought we are done with ravens and ill-omen that makes this franchise ‘it’. I still do not know how Vikram Bhatt ended writing same love-sick triangle story and still called it a reboot. How he must have said, that this is the right time to come back with Raaz by rectifying the mistakes and making it horror-com. Because I really think, after watching few scares, that movie turned out bit on a funnier side.
As we all know the story, it is about a guy Rehaan(Gaurav Arora), who is a banker and in love with Shiana(Kirti Kharbanda). Shiana dumps her boyfriend Aditya(Emraan Hashmi) and gets married to Rehaan. Soon Rehaan receives a better job offer and move to Romania and start to live their happily married life in big mansion.
But as you are in Darcula city, Transylvania, you need to have some lurky, snazzy ghost living under your roof. Things starts to get scary and queasy, you know it when you see eye ball in a sink, paintings with face and hollow eyeballs, blood dripping, this is literally s_cking life out of Rehaan’s life. Shiana wants to help him, even though she is the one getting clutched into this misery of being possessed. Aditya arrives and what happens next makes the crux of the movie. Soooooo.I am not going to give spoilers, but it is something we have already seen.
The raaz becomes too tiring at a point, with dialogues by Girish Dhamjia is woven into boring love scenes and thusly, we can hear ‘kya raaz hai’, ‘kuch toh raaz hai’, ‘kahin to raaz chhupa hai’, ‘yeh raaz hume alag kar dega’; but that raaz doesn’t show its face soon enough on screen but starts coming out of the ears.
The movie has an ugly ghost, literally, the face contortions are such that it hardly scares you and leaves you laughing. It really tries to scare the life out of audience, really tires, but fails miserably, only leaving people around left in fit of laughter, taunts or cooing at the ghost. I guess, we need some lessons from Hollywood to make our Bollywood demons look more weary and scary, be it background or VFX.
Talking about taking lessons from Hollywood, there are some scenes that may have been ‘inspired’ from The Exorcist, Paranormal Activity and slight The Conjuring.
Gaurav Arora is just a movie old but still manages to burn the screen. It is really shocking to see how he steals away all the attention despite having a well-established actor like Emraan Hashmi in the film. Kirti Kharbanda, being debutante, justifies her role of a helpless wife of a banker and being timid.
No wlet’s talk about Emraan Hashmi. So a man-bun…what went wrong? I really did miss his epic performances from Shanghai, even Azhar for matter of fact. His acting in this movie, though limited screen time, is so bad that even the two exorcists perform better than him. He needs to up his acting skills, or soon he will be losing the race.
The music by Jeet Ganguly, Sangeet and Siddharth Haldipur provide little respite, hummable but not memorable. Love the title track, though.
The movie is typical clichéd love story meshed with horror ideas or possession.
You know it is when finally, a priest invokes name of the lord, but what saves the day and vanquishes the evil away(no guesses for that), an ancient mantra and a mangalsutra. I did tell I won’t give out spoilers, but it is something we have already seen and known.
Hahahaa.it was really evilish to think of this, while in Dracula city, you would have propagated bunch of garlic and crosses to drive Vampire away. But it truly defies the logic, as our desis can do it with mangalsutra and a sufi song. These are stronger weapons against all evil.
This is not a must-watch, only watch for…if you are a Raaz franchise fan.
But seriously, Emraan Hashmi in a man bun?! Still not scary enough.