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Bhoot

2003, Movie, NR, 120 mins

Bhoot: Review

BHOOT
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Heavily influenced by THE EXORCIST (1973) on one hand and Japanese ghost movies of the '90s on the other, this Indian spookshow — "bhoot" means ghost in Hindi — involves a young couple who move into an apartment with a terrific view, plenty of closets and a surfeit of bad mojo. Stock analyst Vishal (Ajay Devgan) falls in love with the duplex digs in a Bombay high-rise and thinks nothing of the fact that the previous tenant died in a fall from the terrace. "People die everywhere," he retorts when the realtor hesitantly reveals the apartment's history. "What does the poor house have to do with it?" Vishal and his perky wife, Swati (Urmila Matondkar), are soon happily ensconced in their new domicile, though Swati takes an instant dislike to the building's watchman — they even have words when he enters the apartment unannounced and speaks to her in an overly familiar manner. But the watchman is soon the least of their troubles: Swati begins seeing a girl lurking around the apartment, and is horrified when Vishal confesses that he knew someone had died violently there and didn't see fit to tell her. Within days she's sleepwalking and having vivid waking nightmares; after an especially disturbing episode, Vishal consults a psychiatrist. Then the watchman is found dead, his head twisted backwards; Vishal knows that Swati left the apartment in a trance the night before — could she be the killer? Though at two hours this non-musical supernatural tale is considerably shorter than most mainstream Indian films, it's still slow going, padded with long shots of the troubled apartment building underscored by a soundtrack full of moans and screams. The number of times rational Dr. Rajan (Victor Banerjee) insists that Swati suffers from multiple personality disorder and Vishal replies that his wife isn't crazy could easily be cut by half. Ditto the scenes in which laconic Inspector Liyacat (Nana Patekar), who's convinced Swati is a murderess, pops up in the middle of some intense encounter and makes a droll and thoroughly inappropriate remark: THE EXORCIST's notoriously annoying Lieutenant Kinderman was less irritating. On the plus side, director Ramgopal Varma delivers a couple of effective jolts, and the witch doctor (veteran Bollywood star Rekha) to whom Vishal eventually turns in desperation is a witchy bombshell — it's hard to imagine the being, living or dead, who could resist the force of her will. (In Hindi, with English subtitles.) leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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