Vikram Bhatt's horror film is a big let down, says Namrata Thakker.
Vikram Bhatt has explored the horror genre quite often but he is yet to outdo his best work so far, 2002's Raaz.
His latest film, Ghost, starring TV actress Sanaya Irani and newcomer Shivam Bhaargava, neither is scary nor an edge-of-the-seat thriller.
The movie revolves around Simran Singh (Sanaya), a lawyer, who takes up a bizarre murder case.
The accused Karan Khanna (Shivam) is an electoral candidate of Indian origin in the UK. He is arrested on the charges of murdering his wife.
His colleague convinces Simran to fight his case and after some initial hesitation, she finally comes around.
While Karan is trapped in an unusual murder case involving a ghost, Simran is fighting her own demons.
After losing her father, she gets addicted to morphine.
She also suffers a heartbreak.
Amidst all this, she decides to prove Karan innocent in the court of law.
And that's when the eerie stuff starts happening.
You get to see a creepy hand and a black shadow of a women every now and then.
While these elements do scare you at first, after a point, they seem repetitive and hardly invoke any scares.
The first half of the film does a fine job in building the story and momentum.
Despite the cliched effects and dialogues, Bhatt tries his best to keep the mystery around his characters intact.
But the second half falls flat and how!
The story goes into flashback and it's time to know the back story of the ghost.
There's also Simran and Shivam's love story, which does not make any impact.
The film drags on until the climax, by which time you feel like walking out of the theatre.
The story brings nothing new to the table.
Sanaya Irani is the only saving grace of this not-so-spooky horror film. She acts well and is watchable throughout.
Shivam is good in bits and pieces. Yet, it's strange that he stays calm and composed despite being tangled in a ghost web.
Vikram Bhatt's horror film is a big let down.
If he plans to make a sequel, which seems to be the case going by the ending, let's hope its a Web series instead.
