24/01/2015
Director: Bhushan Patel
Cast: Bipasha Basu, Karan Singh Grover
Rating: 1.5/5
When aliens wipe out humanity and set their base up in Swachh Bharat, they're going to want to know what we did for laughs. Deep beneath an Ooty grave, they will locate a dungeon out of which thousands of DVDs will spill out. I can imagine their confusion when they discover that the same woman appears in a mash-up of one video repeatedly since 2002. They will then leave Earth to find better entertainment. Miss Basu will have saved the planet.
However, her journey is beginning to perpetrate a fair amount of suffering on her fellow humans. As Bollywood's self-anointed Scream Queen, she appears in yet another brightfully boring cave-of-horrors ride. Bhushan Patel, who was last in charge of abusing my senses with Ragini MMS2, returns with a remade tale of conjoined twins—you guessed it—Sanjana and Anjana. One Basu is dead and haunts the other one and her spouse (Grover; unfortunate) rather unimaginatively: Creaky fans, clocks, doors, moaning, whining, swearing, gasps, and I swear I heard a burp too.
And that blasted grandfather Piano again, with a barking dog, spiritual teacher ("I have students, and they learn from me"), black magician, mantras, exorcists, cabin, annoying servants and a mandatory doctor that says, "Operation was successful."
Most noises are taken from Miss Basu's burgeoning sound library. It's as if ghosts these days don't believe in ghosts anymore.
I, as acting psychiatrist of my own being, have genuinely useful advice for generic characters that assume Miss Basu's avatar, women that make sure they're alone at inopportune moments: Stop sleeping in the dark. Sleep with more people in the room (not that way). Smile more. Get checked for asthma. Start dreaming. Destroy ceiling fans. Stop wearing flimsy nighties. Get rid of your Spectrophilia (sexual attraction to ghosts). Avoid fog. Avoid cabins. Live on the streets instead. Get more clued-on husbands. And for God's sake, find a job.
