Raaz 2 Review

Nandita (Kangana Ranaut) has problems. She is being constantly pursued by a slimy being that leaves her and returns to her at will, hurts her each time, is around mostly in the nights, and even appears on her TV many times. And we are talking just about her boyfriend Yash (Adhyayan Suman), a popular TV star - the actual ghost of Raaz 2 is still busy somewhere in North India, butchering assorted people by making them utter a lot of nonsensical stuff first, then cut themselves, and then hang themselves to death in shame. Yes, that's harsh - we know a lot of people who talk utter nonsense, but they are nowhere near cutting or killing themselves for it.

Anyway, one day Nandita finds a man staring uninterruptedly at her. It is not surprising - anybody would stare at her given the very few clothes she wears in this film. However, he follows her right to her home, and gives her a painting which shows her lying unconscious with her wrist slit. She is wondering if he belongs to the Shiv Sena or something, but he explains that he is an artist, and that he painted that in some kind of a trance.

Shortly after that, she actually finds herself lying unconscious with her wrist slit. She then does the most logical thing - no, not ask him to stop painting, but conclude that there is some ghost trying to kill her. She talks about this to Yash, but he is unsympathetic, and just thinks that she tried to commit suicide, without realizing that if she wanted to commit suicide, she would have slit her wrists herself instead of waiting for some ghost to do it. If you are wondering about the logic there, then that's nothing compared to a lot else in this movie.

Anyway, the painter Prithvi (Emraan Hashmi) saves her once again when she is levitating and screaming gibberish in a baritone and then trying to kill herself by slitting her throat, and together they decide to go to Kalindi, a town which is in North India and where people died after screaming similar gibberish. Yes, when you think about it, it's sad if you have to travel huge distances to meet people who talk gibberish and who are anyway dead - except if it's for a political rally, where you are at least paid for it.

The rest of the movie deals with what is behind Nandita, why her life is in danger, what Prithvi has got to do with all this, and how a movie promoted as Bollywood's most expensive horror film can have such lousy graphics. That latter one, however, is the lesser of Raaz's problems - what disappoints audiences most is Emraan Hashmi. Not his acting of course, but the fact that he doesn't even touch a girl in the movie. Hashmi carries the expectations of a whole nation on his shoulders every time he faces the camera (and many people probably fantasize that his real life is also like his reel life). For all of them, in a movie where he doesn't smooch girls, he's less useful than the sum of his parts.

The temptation to compare Raaz 2 to a recent horror masterpiece, 1920, is compelling, and that's to Kangna Ranaut's misfortune - she's not a patch on Adah Sharma here, and hopefully that's because she doesn't have good enough sequences to show off talent. Jackie Shroff in a brief role has nothing much to do, but the music, like with that of most Bhatt productions, can grow on you.

Raaz 2 suffers mostly from a slow pace, not enough horror sequences, and very poor logic. For example, why do all the buffaloes target the car in which Prithvi is also there, when he could clearly die? What is the attack on a "Maharshi" all about? And strictly speaking, Emraan Hashmi's and Kangna Ranaut's characters should have nothing to do with the tale at all.

Watch this one for a mildly exciting time, but to have real fun, give a quick glance to the person sitting in the next seat every 10 seconds and chuckle a little.