I always try to do a selection of foreign horror films for the Horrortoberfest reviews every year and this year I’ll be looking at some Indian horror. Apparently, this is a remake of a film by the same name that was released a couple years before this in Tamil and it was so popular that it got remade in several other languages with this one being the Hindi version. I kind of wish I could watch the original since this version is aggressively mediocre.

The film centers around Kunal, a pizza delivery man with a struggling writer for a wife. They are barely getting by and when she gets pregnant, it seems like things couldn’t get much worse. That is, of course, before he ends up delivering a pizza to a haunted house that ends up claiming his wife and his sanity. When his fellow coworkers find out about it they try to help him but it seems like nothing will work. However, there is more to this haunted house than it seems.

The movie spends an exceptionally long amount of time on the before and after of the haunted house. We learn about Kunal, his wife Nikita, their various troubles, the superstitions of his boss, the problems that the boss’ wife is having, the boss’ ties with some kind of crime family, and more. I’d say only maybe a third or so of this movie is dedicated to being an actual horror film in the way that you would normally expect. When not literally inside the haunted house, the movie plods along at a glacial pace but there is at least sort of a reason for that.

For those planning on watching this, just a quick Content Warning that this film has a lot of depictions of suicide and also Spoilers Ahead as I discuss the end of the film. So it turns out that the reason we have to spend so much time on the periphery of the haunted house is that this is actually a heist movie and not a ghost movie. The entire thing is just Kunal and Nikita trying to get away with stealing diamonds that his boss was hiding for his crime connection. Since the boss is superstitious and believes his wife is possessed by a spirit named Anjali, they go with “a ghost took it” as their big scheme. Honestly the twist almost makes up for how boring the film is but not quite.

The effects aren’t exactly great, the pacing is bad, and it is mostly saved by some clever twists and the acting of the main couple. Not exactly the strongest start to the week but I am hopefully that some of the picks I have ahead will be worthwhile.

Score: 2.5 out of 5