Aatma
Starring: Bipasha Basu, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Doyel Dhawan, Shernaz Patel
At: PVR & others
Rated: 4.5/10
Here is a movie that could have given the audience nightmares or at least kept them wanting to look over their shoulders, for a few days, if they were being watched. Unfortunately, all that this Aatma ends up doing is wanting the whole drama to end.
Of course, it is not necessary that a movie has to have eerie scenes or creepy crawlies coming out from nowhere to scare the wits out the viewers, there are horror movies that play mind games and creates so much fear that even once the credits start to role, the need to be on guard continues.
The aatma does play games, not with the viewer but with the main protagonist Bipasha Basu. And, since Basu is unable to transfer what she is going through to the audience, the whole things falls flat. This doesn’t mean that people don’t keep dropping dead at regular intervals, they do. The problem is that one expects it to happen taking away the surprise element which is the key to any scary film.
Writer-director Suparn Verma fails to flesh out the role of the ghost (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). Though he has used a child to send chill down the spine, all it does is ends up doing is giving the impression that despite the intention of wanting to make the most scary movie in Bollywood, it fails miserably.
Bipasha Basu doesn’t do much besides yelling and shouting that her dead husban’d aatma is out to kill her daughter. Interestingly, it is Doyel Dhawan, the little girl who holds your attention.
Over all, the film falls short when it comes top the scare quotient.