Monday, September 10, 2012

Movie Review – Raaz 3 (Hindi)



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 :-).