Shaapit Movie Review

Cast: Aditya Narayan, Shweta Aggarwal, Rahul Dev

Director: Vikram Bhatt

Ask anyone and they'll tell you that the cardinal rule for a horror film is -- Keep it short! At an agonizing 2 hours and 20-odd minutes, that is just the first of many rules that director Vikram Bhatt breaks in his new film Shaapit.

The movie stars newcomers Aditya Narayan and Shweta Aggarwal as a much-in-love couple that discovers they cannot be together. Problem is our heroine hails from a family of royal ancestry that's been cursed some 300 years ago that their daughters shall never marry.

Why they don't decide to spare everyone the trouble by simply living in together, is a question that's never answered. Instead, Aditya hunts down a professor of paranormal studies (played by Rahul Dev) and urges him to help drive away the curse.

What follows is a cross-country adventure that includes a visit to a haunted library, a burnt-down cinema-hall, an ancient rural jail, a royal museum, and finally a river palace. By this time you're wondering how many Red Bulls the actors have consumed, because even if they don't appear exhausted, you most certainly are.

All along our protagonists are chased by spirits and ghosts, and shortly after intermission the heroine finds herself in a coma. The boys meanwhile are tossing around tennis balls with cryptic messages and religious amulets with secret scriptures, all in the hope of cracking the curse which is inexplicably linked to an incident in the very distant past involving a palace murder. By the time this film finally ends, and the heroine awakes from her comatose state, you feel like you might be slipping into one yourself!

Shaapit suffers from a convoluted plot that flits from occult and witchcraft to science-fiction and palace intrigue. Rahul Dev's character, Professor Pashupathi, is meant to decode the film's paranormal activity for you, but good lord, can that man talk! For all his so-called expertise, it's ironical that he's the only principal character that's killed in this film!

The performances of the actors are uniformly bland, save for Aditya Narayan who at least has screen presence to speak of. Unfortunately the film and its characters take themselves way too seriously, and hence there are few opportunities to enjoy the ride.

I'm going with one-and-a-half out of five for director Vikram Bhatt's Shaapit. Horror films are meant to get your heart racing pumping. At the end of this film, you'll have to check for your pulse.