Genre : Horror
Year : 2013
Running time : 2 hours
Director : Kannan Iyer
Cast : Konkona Sen-Sharma, Emraan Hashmi, Huma Qureishi, Kalki Koechlin, Pavan Malhotra
Kid rating : PG-13
Bobo, the Baffler (Hashmi) is the most successful magician in all of India. He lives a happy, wealthy life with girlfriend Tamara (Qureshi) and child, until one day in the middle of one of his magic shows he starts hallucinating. The hallucination interferes with the trick he is performing and as a result, a performer in his show is injured. Shaken by this experience , and realizing that the hallucination stems from childhood fears, Bobo decides to get help from an old accquaintance.
Sometime later, during another one of his packed shows, Bobo asks for a volunteer and up steps a pretty woman. She calls herself Lisa Dutt (Koechlin), and says she is a fan of Bobo’s having travelled all the way from Canada to meet him. Bobo is shaken – the name is one he recognizes and it brings back bad memories. Now he is sure that evil is underfoot and must take steps to ensure that harm does not come to those he loves most. It might, of course, already be too late.
“Ek Thi Daayan” (There once was a witch) is directed by Kannan Iyer and produced by Vishal Bharadwaj and Ekta Kapoor. While you’d hope that the film is good, Bharadwaj’s recent productions haven’t been quite upto the mark (I wish he’d go back to the genre he does well and stay there!). Having said that, I will say that for the horror genre this isn’t a bad film. Horror has traditionally been badly done in Hindi films; like Bobo, I too have bad memories of it. This film situates it’s characters in the modern world, so it must tie “old-agey” superstition, with a new outlook – a hard act to pull off.
The horror in this film is not grisly or grotesque, but more the horror of anticipation, of bad things about to happen, of a young boy and his even younger sister in a an old, rattling elevator, going down into the depths of the netherworld (each building has its own netherworld, apparently). Bobo remembers his childhood in a dark apartment building, living with his younger sister and widowed father. Enter the evil stepmother Diana (Konkona) who thinks the kids are so cute, she could “eat them up”. You know that bad things are gonna happen, don’t you?
The film succeeds in the first half in making you fear the shadows, and watch some scenes through parted fingers. Konkona Sen Sharma makes a wonderfully evil stepmother and manages to delightfully imbue even her most cloyingly sweet statements with menace – kudos! Huma Qureishi and Hashmi do well too, given that the latter half of the film devolves into cheesy fantasy. The special effects – the daayan-to-dust effect, the slithering evil beings and the writhing daayan hair were quite well done.
Overall a good film – not very scary, but interesting nevertheless.
Kidwise : Scary for young kids, probably appropriate for 13+.
[/amazon_link]- Headhunters (“Hodejegerne”, Norwegian, subtitled, 2011) : Short-statured Roger Brown is a very successful head-hunter in Norway. He is also, unbeknownst to his beautiful wife Diana, a skilled art thief. When he comes to know that an acquaintance has had an expensive painting bequeathed to him, his fingers itch to steal it. This time however, things don’t quite go his way. This well-made suspenseful film has a lot of, sometimes grisly, violence; advise caution for the squeamish.
[/amazon_link]- The Well-Digger’s Daughter (“La fille du puisatier”, French, subtitled, 2011) : An almost Bollywood like film, this is a tale of a poor well-digger’s daughter in love with a wealthy shopkeeper’s dashing son. This film manages an old-world simplicity, mixed together with notions of honor, love and patriarchy.
Rating : 3/5
[/amazon_link]Watching the trailer for the new “Chashme Baddoor” makes me want to list out all the films that should not be remade, especially by David Dhawan. The list is long, but here are 3 out of the many films, that are best left un-remade.
[/amazon_link]2. Katha : This is a magnificent film, starring Naseeruddin Shah, Farooq Sheikh and Deepti Naval. You realize how great an actor Sheikh is when you see him playing fast-talking con-man Basu in this film. He’s effortless; he is Basu. In Chashm-e-buddoor he plays straight-laced, bookish Siddharta with equal ease. Shah is just as fantastic, and plays a good-hearted, simple man fervently in love with his uncaring neighbor Sandhya. This film is also directed by Sai Paranjpe, and is an absolute must-see.
[/amazon_link]3. Jaane Bhi do Yaaron : It was a more innocent time. Films were cleaner, and relied a lot more on a decent story. This film, almost the funniest film ever, is the film to watch. It’s a comedy – true, but has it’s moments of satire and irony. Our heroes are honest buffooons of the first order. They are good people and they think that other people are good too, until they come face-to-face with this corrupt world. 
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