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High profile
fashion model Nandita is living her dream
and to top it all off, her boyfriend just bought her
the perfect house. Unfortunately all good things must
come to an end and Nandita's life takes a turn for the
worse when she starts having ghostly apparitions. It
seems as if a spirit is trying to take over her body
and kill her. With the help from a mysterious man she
now has to solve the mystery in order to survive.
People have been commenting on the fact that I am way
too harsh on Bollywood horror flicks and I have to
disagree. I have nothing against Bollywood movies. Heck,
I even think that the musical numbers are kind of cute
but have you honestly seen a single Bollywood horror
flick that wasn't an unofficial remake of another movie?
There are never any official remakes, Bollywood is
clever enough not to pay any unnecessary fees for those
kind of rights, instead they just blatantly copy a
successful concept and put their own spin on it. Now,
I haven't actually seen the first Raaz movie (which
was apparently a rip-off of What Lies Beneath) but
according to officials there is no connection between
the two movies other than the title. It's a brand new
cast, a brand new story and a brand new movie that's
being ripped off so I think it's safe to say that you
don't have to have watched the first movie in order to
watch the sequel.
So I'm sure many of you are wondering what movie they
ripped off this time. Well, I would say that it's a
mixture of many recent horror flicks but I guess that
the main one would be "The Exorcism of Emily Rose".
There are also moments to be found from other movies
though such as "Into The Mirror", "The Ring" and even
the TV-show "Heroes. There's certainly nothing new or
original about Raaz 2. What makes things even worse is
the 140 minute running time. I mean, oh my god. The
running time is usually what really puts me off with
these Bollywood horror flicks. This opened simultaneously
in Norway and India for some strange reason and the
cinema was surprisingly enough quite crowded. At first
people seemed kind of into it but 90 minutes in people
were starting to look at their watches and some people
even left the cinema. Horror movies really have to be
great in order to stay interesting for that long and
let's face it, Raaz 2 is not great.
It's certainly not awful either though. The movie looks
really expensive compared to most recent Bollywood
horror productions. The cinematography is stunning and
the few musical numbers that we get in here are quite
good. The acting is also above average and technically
there's nothing really wrong about the movie. In fact,
Raaz 2 feels very much like a PG-13 Hollywood production
where everything is great... except for the script
which is riddled with clichés and cheap scares. The
suspenseful moments shine with their absence in Raaz 2
and the moments that are supposed to be scary feel tame
since we've all ready seen most of them before in other
movies. In the end I didn't hate Raaz 2. It's not awful
but it's not terrific either. If I were you I would wait
for the DVD so that you can fast forward over the slow
parts and make it a decent 90 minute feature - or better
yet, skip it all together.
Some cuts and wounds.
Pretty good music in the musical numbers and the overall
score wasn't bad either.
I have to confess, I was expecting more from Raaz 2 after
all the hype and the huge production budget. It fell
short. Raaz 2 is barely watchable due to its generic
plot and excruciating running time. It has some decent
moments but overall I wouldn't recommend it.
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