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Bad times are just on the horizon for Dr. Aman and his wife Neha as they celebrate their one year wedding anniversary. What does it have to do with the opening exorcism performed by some dude who looks like a super handsome Indian Javier Bardem and ends with some silly digital spirit effects? Cool your jets! Im getting to that… man, that was one handsome exorcist. Back to the happy young couple enjoying a life of love and wealth. A sinister stranger knocks on their door (our handsome exorcist looking a little worse for wear) and warns the doctor that he will be performing a post-mortem tomorrow on a man by the name of Avinash Malhotra and he must report the cause of death truthfully. It was poison and it needs to be made known or there will be consequences. No sweat, you’d think, because this Dr. Aman seems like a dude on the straight and narrow but when a shady couple (she looking like an oddly alluring mixture of Debi Mazar and Meg Foster and he pulling off a budget James Roday playing an Indian man vibe) confront him on the beach and tell him to sign the man’s death certificate as death by natural causes. They threaten his life, which doesn’t work, but then they and a few other scumbags threaten his lovely wife (taking her hostage in her own home to prove they’re serious) and Aman decides to look out for his loved one’s best interests… he also makes some money in the deal. It’s a costly mistake. Ya see, the late night visitor is the corpse he’s autopsying and Avinash was an expert practitioner of the black arts while alive. Now dead, he still has power and he’s pretty damn upset his demands weren’t met. His avenging spirit promises it’ll be around until his justice is fulfilled and he’ll be making the lives of the doctor and his wife a living hell. It’s an incredibly awkward elevator conversation between the spirit and Neha. A momentum-killing “comedy” angle with Neha’s sister working in the same hospital as her brother-in-law and being a brat to anyone and everyone is there to remind you that a two-hour runtime is always tough to fill out. She’s also the lady-love of a heroic cop who is introduced beating the ever-loving shit out of a gang of would-be rapists. No complaints, it’s all very Bollywood and who gives two-fucks about rapists. After much knife dodging, glass breaking, roundhouse kicking and fluorescent bulb smashing, Siddharth and Aarti go to visit Aarti’s sister and husband along with their parents. More comedy and some sensual singing and dancing provided by the housekeeper follows after the parents and sister make their exit. She’s sent home so a love number between the married couple can happen. This is when we get to the odd visit from the already dead man with a warning to the doctor. Now that I’ve gone from point B to C just to jump back to A and to land back to B to get us to point D, we get to Neha’s inevitable possession and the supernatural vengeance… after some more detours into sexually charged dance numbers, enthusiastic scheming and possession drama. The plotting of this review may suck but I want you to get a good sense of awkward pacing because you’ll need to be comfortable with it if you want to enjoy this bad boy. It’s not as wild as the same genre of films from the region that came in the prior decades but if you have a taste for the horror from this neck of the woods, you’ll find enough to enjoy. It’s pretty horny, which I’m all for, and everyone is easy on the eyes, which I’m also all for because it feels like a softer-core version of a softcore erotic thriller that was already pretty timid to begin with. You can see there was more money behind this than the films I’m particularly fond of from the area and it loses the charming junkyard aesthetic thanks to having a production budget and looking more like a soap opera than a film reel that was discovered in a water-damaged box at a garage sale. Indian dollar store James Roday rocks some seriously uncomfortable lookin’ leather pants, there’s a whole lotta gyrating, Bava lighting, despicable criminals and way too much plot. Again, if this is your flavor of dish, you’ll be fine if slightly thrown off by how clean it looks. It also trades in garbage practical effects for garbage digital effects but that doesn’t bother me all that much... we still get some fun bits unhampered by computer effects just in case it’s a dealbreaker for ya. Sure, I miss a good rubber mask but that’s progress so I’m told and we do get to see a man’s head explode. I had a blast and that’s always impressive when something runs close to two hours.
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