The Bhootnii movie review: 0 star review; this film lacks plot, production value, sense and sensibility

There’s a college called St Vincent’s in Delhi, in which stands the Virgin Tree, around which love-struck students moon. This so-called college, which looks like a badly-constructed set, has scores of so-called students, of which our trio — Shantanu (Sunny Singh), Sahil (Nickunj Sharma), and Nasser (Aasif Shaikh) — is busy staving off needy spirits with the help of a black hoodie-clad ghostbuster called Baba (Sanjay Dutt), who quotes solemnly from the Gita about the ‘aatma’ being ‘ajar and amar’. He also says, ‘yeh chudail nahin, adhoori khwaish hai’.

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Nope, I am not making any of this up.

Then there’s our Bhootni-in-chief, who goes by the name of Mohabbat (Mouni Roy). She has a tragic back-story, and emerald green eyes. She likes yanking ‘scardey-cat’ (this is an actual English subtitle from the movie, I swear) boys into the skies, and asking them, ‘tumhari hobbies kya hain’? Can’t see a broomstick, but anything is possible, right?

There’s loads of disjointed chatter about science and religion (vigyaan aur dharm), Valentine’s Day and Holika Dahan, and oh, do not miss this woke stroke, ‘koi Hindu Muslim ka time hai yeh’. Hear hear. It takes a film which is not even a film, just some scattered, stray ideas masquerading as one, to come up with that one.

At one point the Bhootnii bats her lashes and says, I am not alive. Nor am I, dear reader, nor am I.