Cast: Gaurav Arora, Kriti Kharbanda, Emraan Hashmi
Director: Vikram Bhatt
Rehan (Gaurav Arora) has just moved to the picture-postcard surroundings of Romania with his wife Shania (Kriti Kharbanda) who had been pestering him to chuck his earlier job as a zonal manager in Mumbai, and take up this plum offer as the head of a finance company that also gives him a plush apartment in an upscale locality. Things look perfect, though it doesn’t take long to sense trouble in their marital life as Rehan snaps at Shania barely after their arrival from India, and even sleeping in separate bedrooms. She also sees an “eye” popping out of a washbasin; a laptop with bloodstained marks, a window abruptly opening; and a flower vase on a table suddenly cracking… and dripping water…
Vikram Bhatt’s final instalment of the Raaz series — Raaz Reboot — attempts to cross genres — romance, part horror, relationship drama, and some beyond the range of mysterious supernatural occult. But this oddball film’s mash-up comes at the price of a 128-minute torture that turns into “aatma” “raaz”, “mangal sutra” mumbo jumbo. While most of these things happen to Shania in this desultory tale, Rehan impulsively jets off to Munich, and Shania starts imagining things, gets possessed as the film moves backward and forward in quick succession making us lose track of the present, at times.
As some inexplicable happenings begin to take a toll on Shania’s life, Rehan is made to add further obscurity to the cryptic plot (whatever there is, in the first place) by not being an understanding husband and behaving awkwardly. There are other regular characters too, which do their bit to add vagueness to the occurrences: a married couple as good friends, an Indian psychometrist; a priest, a tarot card reader — to delay rationalisation and clarification of strange goings-on. In addition, some scenes — like a crow chasing him and smashing Rehan’s car windscreen, a figure lurking in the shadows of alleys, a dead body emerging out of nowhere from under Shania’s bed, etc., are so deliberately thrown in that we wonder where the story would eventually lead to.
Not that all this is anything new in any Vikram Bhatt film. In the earlier Raaz series we have had an overdose of spirits hanging around and trying to sabotage plans, an evil spirit unexpectedly surfacing more for scary effects, and, here, again, the filmmakers don’t reveal much and allow suspenseful drama to unfold as Emraan Hashmi — looking like he has just emerged from a root-canal job — makes a late appearance as Shania’s former husband who mysteriously knows what all she has been going through. Obviously, Bhatt drops little hints of unease along the way, not revealing to the audience much, and leaving them to wait for the denouement.
It’s the major part of the film’s unintentional narrative that invariably drifts towards the ludicrous. Things get so unnecessarily complicated after Hashmi’s presence that the film’s tone turns self-consciously absurd, and largely comes across as a joke. For filmmakers in the West, it has been the primary focus on the supernatural and the occult sciences for inspiration for films like The Omen and other exorcist series, while in the climax of Raaz Reboot, the lead pair clutching the mangal sutra for their ultimate survival while every else recites Hanuman chalisa is a ridiculous excuse for a story. Why, in the past, we have had rings, dupattas, bangles, saris, et al coming to the rescue of many uncanny climax sequences in umpteen horror-romance-mystery films of this genre? Wonder what is likely to become the paranormal leitmotif next? A bindi?
The writer is a film critic and has been reviewing films for over 15 years. He also writes on music, art and culture, and other human interest stories.
