Horror Story Review

Vikram Bhatt's ASA Productions has been going great guns with its horror fixations so it comes as no surprise when yet another from that particularly prolific genre factory hits the screens. This Ayush (Mumbai Cutting) Raina directed scare piece doesn't have much to show for all the kills and spills that it engineers from within, though.

A reunion of seven school friends that turns into a nightmare, this movie tries valiantly to explore the powers of the supernatural and the very human fears associated with such paranormal beliefs, in the space of one night. The film revolves around seven youngsters who challenge each other to spend the night at an infamous and supposedly haunted hotel in the heart of the city.

Achint(Nishant Malkani), Maghesh(Ravish Desai), Samrat(Hasan Zaidi), Maggie(Aparna Bajpai), Neema(Radhika Menon) and Sonia(Nandini Vaid) who get together for a farewell party celebrating  their friend Neel(Karan Kundra)'s acceptance for higher studies abroad, enter the sealed Hotel Grandiose and in turn become fodder for the scare factory. Maggie is the bindaas spunky ,fearless girl, Neena is shy, soft-spoken and level-headed, Neil is a musician who knows what he wants of life, Achint is typically middle-class with all the trappings that go with it,Samrat is rich and foolishly fearless-disbelieving of anything supernatural, Soniya is the cautious one while Magesh is a fun-loving intern-soon-to-be-doctor. Their objective was to have some fun together but the result was altogether different. Little did they know that this would turn out to be the most horrendous night of their life...

Blood, gore and body counts are an expected from such fare. So are poorly made-up ghosts, creepy apparitions, cheap VFX tricks and sustained clamouring of ventilators. Genre staples abound but there is not much tension to help the scares look crusty and believable.The script lacks cannily carved suspenseful moments. The characters are also not quite well defined. Thankfully the run time is limited to a sharp 1hr 30 hours and there is no romance or song and dance to plague our senses or hamper the pace-for which we should be infinitely grateful.

Blood curdling and spine-chilling it is not!

Rating **