The Ghost (2006) – DVD Review

The Ghost, AKA Aatma, is quite a unique film. The Indian horror film comes across as so many different genres, that I’m not quite sure what director, Deepak Ramsay, was going for. Was I entertained? Yes. Was The Ghost good? Not really.

Rating:

Let’s see if I can get the plot out in a way that makes sense: Dr. Aman (Kapil Jhaveri) is doing very well for himself (as can be seen by his mansion of a house). He’s clearly hard working and cares very deeply for his beautiful wife Neha (Neha – yup she goes by just one name on IMDB, and it happens to be the same as her character). The two are celebrating their anniversary when a strange man appears at the door and warns Aman not to lie. Perplexed, Aman goes about the rest of his night, not really thinking about what the man was talking about. Soon afterwards, he is put in a very precarious situation in which his wife is being held hostage until he forges a post-mortem paper saying that a victim died of “natural causes”. Well, wouldn’t you know it; the man that was at the door was the ghost of the recently deceased. The ghost gets pissed and seeks revenge by tormenting the good doctor, and bringing the film securely into Exorcist territory. From here on out, it’s a race against time to calm the ghost and solve the murder mystery before everyone Aman holds dear ends up dead.

If the story sounds familiar that’s because it’s pretty much a rip-off of many better movies (and several worse films). As I mentioned earlier, there is a possession. Actually there are two. The opening sequence involves a hilarious possession/exorcism that ends with a priest pushing a religious symbol (I’m not sure which one it is, so I’ll just be vague as so not to offend anyone) against the possessed woman’s forehead. Well, someone (very clearly) painted the symbol on to her head to make it look like it was burned on to the skin. I mean, the medallion doesn’t even touch her skin before the mark is on her face. Awesome. The second possession runs through the entire final third of the film. It doesn’t end there. The ghost leaves her body to torment other people, and while it’s gone Neha is herself again. Hmm, where else have we seen this happen? Oh, yes, Psychic Killer.

There’s incredible lighting. Where have I seen such vibrant uses of color before? It’s coming to me. Oh, yes, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath springs to mind. But the best part is that The Ghost doesn’t really stick to just horror. Oh, no. The main story is actually a convoluted tale of greed, backstabbing, and criminal mischief. Add to that characters who break out into song for no reason at all, and three (that’s right, three) full on, music video-styled sequences of singing and dancing in the first forty minutes. I’m not kidding. The Ghost goes all out into Disney territory and never looks back. Within ten minutes of the beginning of the film, a street fight breaks out that would make a young Jackie Chan embarrassed that he ever attempted to learn martial arts (that’s sarcasm if you missed it). If you think that’s nuts, wait until you get a load of how it all pans out. You can see it coming a mile away, and yet you’ll still shake your head at what you just see.

I need to get this out of the way. This film had three gorgeous women in it. Over and over, they found themselves in skimpy outfits, bathing suits or underwear. What you don’t do when you have a film that’s not strong enough to stand on its own, is tease the audience and then never give them the one thing that could save the film. It’s not something I usually care about unless I’m watching a full-on exploitation flick, but the fact that there was zero skin in this film really hurt it. I mean, I had to sit through three terrible sing-along montages. Why the hell can’t I get a nipple from one of these women? It’s not like they could act anyway.

Overall, The Ghost was a decent waste of time. If you want to laugh your ass off, I’d highly recommend this. I mean, half the time the subtitles are horribly written butchery of the English language (if they’re even there), and the way things happen one after another is terribly hilarious. For anyone looking for something legitimately entertaining, I’d look elsewhere.

EXTRAS

TRAILERS: A few different versions of The Ghost’s trailer. It looks like they just changed the pictures above the writing. They all show pretty much the same thing.

FORTHCOMING ATTRACTIONS: OK, I really don’t know if that was a music video or a trailer, but Devi is up first, and once again it looks like we get two examples of the film. Nothing too special here. Again, for the next segment, we’re given Paap and once again I’m not sure if it’s a film or a music video clip. The girl starts singing along with the music. A bonus is that she’s gorgeous so it’s worth taking a quick look.