Phoonk

8216;Phoonk8217; could just as well have been called 8216;Ram Gopal Verma Ki Exorcist8217;: a little girl thrashes about in her bed, spews out guttural male voices, and turns on her loving family. But like all RGV8217;s bad copies, this one too gets derailed by familiar sights and sounds. And too little fear: what8217;s the point of a horror film which makes its audience laugh?

It8217;s not just the Hollywood classic that8217;s been cannibalised. 8216;Phoonk8217; also borrows scenes from his own excellent 8216;Bhoot8217; the last genuinely scary, classy film from Ramu8217;s stable, and that clunker 8216;Vaastushastra8217; 8212; it has very much the same sort of sprawling house, and family, and a little boy who sees things.

It could also have been called 8216;Nimbu Mirch Ki Kahaani8217;, given that those things star so heavily in so many scenes: in the courtyard of the house, on the road, in the living room. The about-to-be-possessed girl Ahsaas stares cunningly at a raven. The grandma beats her chest and says it8217;s all 8216;kaala jaadu8217; this is a Hindi movie, so no one says 8216;black magic8217;. The mother Amruta Khalvilkar just beats her chest. And the father Sudeep turns into a believer from an atheist, in order to save his beloved daughter: he didn8217;t allow a temple to be constructed on his site, so this is retribution, see? But the end comes only after we8217;ve been regaled by the sight of a hysterical woman Ashwini Kalsekar sticking pins into a rag doll, and a shambling, half-blind tantrik sniffing the devil out. When, oh when, will the old Ramu return?