This is possibly how the job interview of the director of ‘Aatma’
went-
Producer A: What can you offer us? Do you have any new ideas
to revamp the genre?
Director: I want to make a horror film.
Producer B: are you any good?
Director: I want to make a horror film.
Producer A: Why should we appoint you as the director of this film?
Director: I want to make a horror movie.
Producer A: I think we should appoint him, he is motivated enough.
Producer B: yes, he wants to make a horror film.
Director: I want to make a horror film.
I am a conscious phobophile. Not the one that goes to
amusement parks and vomits his guts out while laughing out loud, sitting on a
rollercoaster. I am the one that goes to watch horror movies and vomits out
popcorn while gasping out loud, sitting on the edge of the recliner seats. I
just made it up- the latter part- to make the introduction of the review a more
poetic and an artistically consistent experience. Because I believe that when a
film is not entertaining, its reviews surely are.
Yes, I am a conscious phobophile, perhaps placed somewhere
in the centre of the phobophile measurement scale, but a phobophile
nonetheless. Nothing connects to me more than fear does. And do not
misunderstand this love of fear for love of exploitation; the lesser the gore,
the merrier the horror movie experience. Because then you know that they have
better things to focus on, rather than the obvious ones that waste everybody’s
time.
The reason I emphasize on my genre preference is to take the
following point home- it takes great effort to disappoint an audience on all
counts, but it takes a miracle to disappoint the fans. You might say that it is
easier to disappoint the fans because they have been analyzing the genre for a
substantial time and expect more from a horror film than the rest of the
audience do. I disagree. I say that they go to whimper, love to whimper and
relish even a small helping of whimper generation.
Before I go dissecting the movie, I need to present a
justification for watching the movie in the first place. Why would a critic
have to do that? Isn’t he/she supposed to disregard the trailers and his/her
own conscience in order to rate the movie objectively? This would be true in most
of the cases. But if you are familiar with the quality of the current Indian horror
film churn-out, you would have to be a nutcase if you want to pay to watch one
yourself. I fancy thinking that I am not a nutcase, therefore the
justifications- Firstly; the Bhatt camp has monopolized and ruined (in that
order) the Indian horror cinema. This movie was an exception. Secondly,
Nawazuddin Siddiqui had smitten me with his performance in Gangs of Wasseypur,
Kahaani and Peepli Live. I trusted his choice of script. I wonder if he would also come up with a
justification list after watching the movie himself. Thirdly, the plot-though a
cliché, but a newer one- promised to explore multiple emotions and directions
than the usual haunted house paradigm.
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| Promising posters have become a reason to suspect foul play |
Aatma is a story of a woman trying to save her daughter from
being taken to the afterlife by a possessive, psychopathic, cuckolded and
(before I forget) dead husband. Towards the beginning of the film, we learn
that the daughter has been kept away from the truth of her father’s long absence.
So when he comes late at night (when her mother is fast asleep) and tucks her
in with a bed time story, the girl doesn’t suspect oddity. Soon her father
starts accompanying her to her classroom and helps her with the classwork. The
father also tells her that he loves her more than her mother does and that he
is going to take her away with him, away from her evil mother. The little girl
is also oblivious of the fact that this loving man, her father, is/was a wife
beater.
History testifies to the fact that the villain needs to be a
better developed and a more real character than the hero himself. Be it Darth
Vader or Voldemort or Raoul Silva from Skyfall, all these people-though
fantasized and exaggerated their antics are- are more like us, they faced real
conflicts in decision-making and survived them only to die at the hands of
their respective contrived, utopian and idealist figures- the Heroes. Aatma had
a great potential to build a great villain. And with a casting triumph like
that (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), their job was half done! But the ham-up operation
was led by a team of headstrong genre-terrorists that interpreted the ‘holy
book of horror’ wrong. The hero/heroine in this case- It’s like all the other
cases, they are always right. Only in horror movies, they get to be dumb as
well.
An ideal way to make this film would have been the adoption
of a moody approach. Things should have taken time to unravel. The relationship
between the father and the daughter, the father and the mother and the mother
and the daughter should have been explored to the point we started caring about
them. Even if they had ascended to melodrama, I would not have complained. The
idea of the story does provide an opportunity to discover sentimental passages
that could lead to an enthralling climax, full of emotion. But then this is a
lot of wishful thinking. Let us see how the film’s been executed (pun intended)
in this particular universe of ours-
The film opens with a song that could have been used in the
background during the spooky scenes. As soon as the opening credits are done with,
the film jumps into the plot, perhaps too early! This is the perfect place to
explain with an analogy- instead of putting the first gear, the film directly
puts the fifth one and as for the climax, it chooses the only one left- the
reverse gear.
Once you spot a logical loophole in a film that you wanted
to enjoy, the experience just gets ruined. In this particular film- why does
the mother not sleep in her daughter’s room when she knows that a psycho ghost
comes visits the little girl and has already threatened to take her away? Why
does the woman never make an escape strategy throughout the film? Why expect
the ghost to just give up its escapades for no reason? Every time the dead
husband makes his nightly appearance, this woman- probably suffering from short
term memory loss- hops, skips and shouts with shock. The antagonist himself is
not a very stable character. This particular ghost has got his ideology wrong!
His counterparts will cringe in embarrassment when they see how illiterate he
is in the art of haunting. He kills all the random people for no reason, even
if they do not come in his way. This might be the film’s alternate way of telling
us that he is a psychopath. The problem is, they waste a lot of time saying
that. There is no limit to the variety of ways in which the movie annoys you- A
certain character in the movie (that of a cop) is investigating the random
murders committed by this misguided ghost of ours. He gets to annoy us by
repeatedly reminding us, in a pseudo-ominous tone- “Yahan kuch galat ho raha
hai…” This exercise is used to bring us back to the edge of the seat, even as
the film reaches its climax. They got it right in a way. The film was so bad in
developing any sense of fearful progression that we had to be reminded by this guy
time and again.
Another flaw is that the movie ‘tries’ to be intelligent. It
tells us of things that are happening off-screen, through random dialogues
(badly delivered). Now most filmmakers use this trick to focus on more important
plot points. This film wasted those plot points off screen. What WAS kept was
stupidity. Here is an example; our Sherlock Holmes explains a murder scene to
our heroine-
“Unke sharer par koi ghaav nahi tha”
“Phir who kaise mari?”
“Unka Galaa kaatkar maara gaya”
“Par aapne toh abhi bola ki koi ghaav nahi tha”
*ominous pause*
”Unka gala andarse kaata gaya tha”
*audience mocks the situation with sarcastic sighs of
realization*
And worry not; the film is full of these. The little girl
was just attacked by a supernatural ghost but was saved at the last moment by
her mother. The mother takes her away to spend the night at the neighbor’s
place (why? The house is not haunted, the little girl is! Why endanger the
innocent neighbors?). There a friendly woman tucks the girl in with her own and
reassures the mother- “she is safe now”. How do you know? You have no basis to
prove that statement! Just because a dialogue is necessary, you don’t have to
speak baseless stuff. Times like these, we should go with the Hollywood staple-
“everything is going to be alright”. It’s a broad statement that doesn’t talk
about now. It talks about the final state of being. So even if things go wrong
in the immediate future, you cannot be blamed. For uttering that one baseless
dialogue, I guess the neighbors deserved the endangerment.
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| Kid's possessed by a ghost! These guys put the 'no' in in'no'vation! |
When it comes to acting, what you have got to do in a horror
movie is, firstly, be cynical when it comes to walking the corridors.
Definitely, do not switch on the lights, because that way the disable the ghost.
And secondly, act like you were being chased by a monster. The child actress
cannot be blamed for her performance, but we can say that she was not motivated
at all. Bipasha Basu must be proud that she is doing different stuff than
dancing to item numbers, wearing skimpy outfits, but watching her in movies
like Raaz-3 and this one, you want to pick her up (like you do in those
strategy games) and place her in a place more respectable… the shampoo
commercials, maybe? No she does not do a bad job; she could have definitely
done a better job, only there is not much of a job to do. It’s more than
dancing in skimpy outfits, but it’s sillier. As for Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he has
just had his adrenaline shot to fame with his Gangs of Wasseypur stardom. He
will have to choose his scripts carefully. I have to admit though that he was
arresting in whatever little screen presence he had. He was one of those good
ideas that were kept off the screen, you see?
Finally, if I were you and I was reading this article, I
would pan the critic for
1.
Wasting so much time in watching a movie he knew
was not going to be any good
2.
Wasting so much time in writing a review for the
movie nobody is going to watch any way.
Perhaps I would be right in doing that. It is not hard to
see that shock horror is on the verge of dying. But it has been dying for a
long time. There are superior genres. Genres that make you laugh, the ones that
make you think about your life and the ones that inspire you. Horror in itself
has been made into a cheap way of earning money. In olden days people used to
go to magic shows to get dumbfounded, now we go to horror films. People will
never stop testing their courage. They need to be motivated regularly. They
need to know that they are not afraid and they need to feel intelligent. These
needs are satisfied by today’s horror cinema. The genre will always remain on
the verge of dying. What a sad state of immortality. I am reminded of a
particular episode of The Twilight Zone, in which a man makes a deal with the
devil. He trades his sickness for immortality, only to be imprisoned for life!
I do not regret watching this film. It was a waste of time,
but it was laughably bad. Everybody in the auditorium laughed their guts out.
They had a good time wasting their time.
One thing is for sure. As the crow's been flying, this has become a paradoxical statement-
' I have a good taste in movies. My favourite genre? Horror '
As for ‘Aatma’,
there was not a singular scary moment. Don’t watch it deliberately, only
accidentally.
