Business rating: 0.5/5 stars (Half star)
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Genre: Horror suspense
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What’s Good: Three songs.
What’s Bad: The uninspiring script; the lack of the scary element in the horror scenes; the ordinary performances of the lead actors; the slow pace; the inane dialogues.
Verdict: Ghost will haunt its makers with poor box-office collections.
Loo break: A couple.
Watch or Not?: Watch it if you like horror dramas even if they aren’t chilling.
Spoiler alert! You may want to skip directly to the ‘Script Analysis’ portion of the review.
Mega Bollywood and Owl Village Films Pvt. Ltd.’s Ghost (A) is a horror film. Dr. Suhani (Sayali Bhagat) works in City Hospital in which nurse Lea is murdered in the most gruesome manner and under mysterious circumstances. The murderer has left no clue and, therefore, there is no evidence. There is also not a single eye witness. Dr. Saxena (Deep Raj Rana), who had sexual relations with nurse Lea on the day she was killed, receives a telephone call from Lea two days later, and he invites her to his house. Lea goes to him and he is also soon found murdered. His body is also badly mutilated. It turns out that the phone call had been made to Dr. Saxena after the murder of Lea but both, Lea’s body and her cell phone were chanced upon by Dr. Suhani only two days later.
Vijay Singh (Shiney Ahuja), the chief investigation officer of a renowned detective agency, is put on the job to solve the murder case. Even while he is investigating, another employee of the hospital is found murdered and the corpse is a ghastly sight. In quick succession, another doctor is found murdered in a horrendous fashion.
All the four murders are of the hospital’s staff members; they take place around 3 a.m.; the hearts of all the victims are found removed from their bodies; the bodies are badly damaged; there are no clues and no wit nesses. Dr. Suhani suspects the presence of some unnatural force but Vijay Singh doesn’t think so. Even as the investigation is in progress, Vijay Singh and Dr. Suhani become fond of each other and fall in love with one another.
Suddenly, it emerges that Vijay Singh had had an accident in which he had forgotten a few things about his past (retrograde amnesia). Among the things he had forgotten was that he had participated in a television game show called Sadak Chhap. His co-participant in the show was one Mary (Julia). Strangely, Mary has a connection with the hospital murders. As the drama progresses, it is revealed that Vijay Singh had gotten married to Mary who had been killed gruesomely on the wedding day itself. Who had killed Mary and why? Was it Mary’s ghost now on the prowl? Why had the ghost targeted two doctors, a nurse and an employee of the hospital? Answers to these questions are revealed in the second half.
Puja Jatinder Bedi’s story is juvenile and her screenplay goes haywire. Vijay Singh happens to be the investigation officer, otherwise the case may have remained unsolved – this is difficult to digest. Also, although the film is a horror drama, it rarely, if ever, manages to send a chill down the spine. In other words, the scenes are intended to be scary but are far from it. The romantic track looks completely out of place in the horror drama and even the cosy scenes between Vijay Singh and Dr. Suhani appear forced and any- thing but romantic. Besides, the romantic interludes dilute the investigation process or so the audience feels. Even otherwise, the inquiry seems to be headed in no particular direction for quite some time. Likewise, the first scene between Vijay Singh and his businessman-father (Tej Sapru) looks forced into the drama and is, in a way, a giveaway because the audience senses that the father would be a link in the horror drama. Since Vijay Singh was aware of his accident and his medical report mentioned that he had had a partial loss of memory, it seems strange when he is astounded to learn that he had participated in a game show which he can’t now remember. Why is he astonished?
The first clue which Vijay Singh gets while solving the murder case is a earring – and this looks very far-fetched, more so because the correlation between the earring and the murder is hurriedly shown. Yet an other weakness of the script is that the pace of the drama is very slow and robs the drama of the excitement there ought to have been in a suspense horror film like this. Dialogues, also penned by Puja Jatinder Bedi, are inane most of the times.
Shiney Ahuja does a fair job but his performance seems laidback, probably because of the lacklustre script. Sayali Bhagat is average. Her dialogue delivery does not befit a doctor. Julia is ordinary. Deep Raaj Rana performs effectively. Tej Sapru pro vides unexceptional support. Manish Upadhyay, Sandip Soparrkar (in a dance) and the others fill the bill.
Puja Jatinder Bedi’s direction is dull as the chills and thrills of a horror suspense drama are missing completely. Music (Toshi-Shabri) is a plus point. The ‘Aaja’, ‘Jalwanuma’ and ‘Salaame salaame’ songs are well-tuned and appealing. Lyrics (Kumaar, A.M. Turaz and Sandeep Nath) are nice. Picturisation of the ‘Jalwanuma’ song is eye-filling for the beautiful locations rather than due to the choreography. The dance by Shiney Ahuja and Sayali Bhagat in the ‘Salaame salaame’ song is weak as the grace in their dancing is missing. It must be added that all the romantic songs come abruptly and break the flow of the drama or whatever there is of it. The job of the choreographers (Longines Fernandes, Piyush Panchal and Stanley D’costa) is ordinary, at best. Background music, scored by Raju Singh, is very average. Prem Sharma’s stunts are commonplace. Visual effects are truly ordinary.
On the whole, Ghost fails to scare the audience and, therefore, its collections will scare the daylights out of the people associated with it. A poor show.
Don’t agree with our review of this film? Feel free to voice your opinion in the comments section below.
Komal Nahta, the Editor of Koimoi.com, is Bollywood’s most trusted trade analyst & film reviewer. You can follow him on Twitter and check out his Video Blog.
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