ER physician Jill's (Sushmita Sen) family - her stay-at-home husband Virag (J.D. Chakravarthi, possibly the most boring actor alive today; at least he made me think wistfully back on "exciting" people like romantic leads in Hollywood 30s and 40s movies), their son Rohan (Ahsaas Channa) and her younger sister Radhika (Peeya Rai Chowdhary) are moving into a large house in the country. Here, they are closer to the hospital Jill works in and should be well away from all the classical evils of The Big (Evil) City.
Well, they probably are, the trouble is that the family's new jungle home is somewhat haunted. At first, the ghosts spend their time doing the usual ghostly things, like causing whoosh cuts and weird camera angles, befriending Rohan, killing the new, thievish and child-abusing nanny, and so on. But it does not take too long until they are widening their activities to attacks on the core family.
The Ram Gopal Varma produced Vaastu Shastra is a very typical example of contemporary Hindi horror. One is tempted not to call these films with their lack of musical numbers, short (under two hours!) running time and an aesthetic that reminds one much more of contemporary ghost horror from the rest of Asia than of the films of the Ramsays (or, for that matter, things like Shaitani Dracula) real Bollywood movies at all. (And, honestly, how do we define Bollywood movies, other than them being made in Hindi instead? I certainly don't know and am reluctant to tie "Bollywood" as genre too closely to a place).
This film is a rather nice example of the all-Asian horror style. Sure it's not as creep-inducing as the best films of Shimizu or as intelligent as the best of Nakata, but it sits nicely in the solid middle of the field. It's mostly a little too slick to be really disturbing and nearly ruins some visually creepy moments through overuse of incredibly corny sound effects, but director Sourabh Usha Narang shows himself quite capable of the fine art of escalation (and of the less fine, but important art of using creepy and creeping camera angles), something most contemporary American directors have never heard of.
The acting's mostly fine, too.
The only thing that is really holding the film back (besides the sound design) is Chakravarthi's performance, which is not a big problem before the finale of the film (he isn't all that important), but makes a silly ending more silly than strictly necessary. Ah, for the time when male leads were afforded to have more than one facial expression...
Still, for a completely derivative little horror flick, this is rather good fun - and who would have thought to see a Hindi movie with a final third that seems to be influenced by Night of the Living Dead and/or Carnival of Souls?
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2 comments:
This sounds interesting! I guess. I've never seen an Indian horror film, but then I've only ever seen two Indian films period (and neither Don nor Asoka is even remotely scary). Where would you suggest starting, for those interested in such things?
If you have a relatively high tolerance for films of the Asian horror boom of the last ten years, Vaastu Shastra isn't a bad one to start with.
For the older style of Bollywood horror (with all its musical numbers, painful comedy skits and incredible enthusiasm), Mondo Macabro's Bollywood Horror Collection which contains two films by the kings of Bollywood horror, the Ramsay Brothers, is a very nice starting point.
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