I saw this movie with my family. First hint - Don’t do this. Especially if you have small kids in your family. My daughter (7 years old) refused to go into remotely dark locations in our house for more than a week. Screeches of the door made her jump. I saw her cry out loud at least 2-3 times. Never - ever - see it with kids.
It was Halloween day. We got the DVD and popped it in. I told my kids that this was a nice day - perfect day actually - to watch a scary movie. Until the interval we were all laughing at the ’scary’ moments - screaming for additional effect etc. But the last half hour was beyond fun. We were watching with rapt attention, me waving my near-shivering daughter to keep quiet so that we could see the end.
It is (for a Bollywood movie) extremely well made. From the genre that was nearly pioneered and mostly monopolised by the Ramsay brothers, Ramu (Ram Gopal Varma) has at last raised the horror movie to its well-deserved place in Bollywood filmdom. I still rate his Bhoot as one of the best horror movies of recent times. But there have been some in the past that have been as good - if not better. One that comes to mind is Gehrayee (1980) - probably way beyond most of the ’Net connected people’s memories. However Gehrayee was more along the lines of Exorcist.
Briefly, this movie is about a ghost (or two) that haunt a place and how even having good ’Feng Shui’ (Vaastu Shaastra) does not help in keeping the bad spirits away.
The biggest problem was that there were loud noises at most of the inopportune moments. And by this I don’t mean the weird giggling or other so-called ’haunted’ noises. I am talking about the most unnecessary noises that needlessly cause the auditory functions to get overloaded.
The lighting is fantastic. I must say that most of the shots were perfectly shot in the best light I have seen in Hindi movies in a while. Mani Ratnam seems to be having some positive effects outside of the Tamil movies!
If Ramuji keeps making such movies, and goes from strength to strength (Bhoot, Darna Mana Hai and now this one) he will soon raise the respectability of the horror film to that of the ’lost in mela’ genre.