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RAAZ (2002)
Produced by Mukesh Bhatt Music: Nadeem Shravan Starring: Bipasha Basu, Dino Morea, Ashutosh Rana, Malini Sharma, Shruti Ulfat
Running Time: 151 Minutes
CineRating: 5.5 out of 10
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Even bad Hollywood movies, it seems, can redeem themselves by leading fruitful second lives as reincarnated foreign features. Case in point: Raaz. While virtually everyone but the filmmakers themselves readily acknowledges that this Bollywood film is essentially a Hindi remake of Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath, labelling it a "ripoff" may be overstating the case, as Raaz stumbles off in several different directions from the Zemeckis film. A marginal improvement over Zemeckis' lackluster original, Raaz's significance lies less in its overall quality than in its surprising boxoffice performance. A sleeper hit in India, and one of the few films to generate a profit during the first half of 2002, Raaz's lack of a big budget and big-name stars suggests that its success lay primarily within its atypical plot -- a fact that could signal a new lease on life for Bollywood's virtually non-existent horror genre.
The storyline of Raaz may seem less than inspiring to American audiences since, when it isn't borrowing liberally from What Lies Beneath, it's taking bits and pieces from Stir of Echoes and Final Destination. Yet, while it's nowhere near as compelling as last year's Aks, it's still a reasonably efficient little chiller that suggests there might be better films like it in Bollywood's future. The movie also marks the arrival of Bipasha Basu (Ajnabee [2001]), a striking model-turned-actress whose star significantly brightened due to Raaz's resounding success. Basu portrays Sanjana Dhanraj, a woman who gives her husband (Dino Morea) one last chance to salvage their crumbling marriage by returning with her to their dream home in Ooty -- the place where they first fell in love. However, shortly after their arrival, Sanjana is plagued by sounds of screams and gunshots, and visions of a blood showering chandelier. A local professor (Ashutosh Rana) believes that a vengeful spirit is to blame, and enlists Sanjana's aid to discover why the ghost has targeted Sanjana and her husband.
Bipasha Basu is a game performer, but at this point in her career she lacks the onscreen warmth and effortless charm of a Tabu or Aishwarya Rai. That she fails to entirely convince as an ordinary woman caught in a supernatural crisis is not wholly her fault, as one could hardly ever describe this exotic beauty as "ordinary." In fact, her sharply defined facial features carry an attractive but oddly reptilian-like aura, with one half expecting a forked tongue to come slithering out of her mouth at any moment. (She'd be ideal in a snake-woman movie.) It's of little surprise that her most convincing scene comes when her character is possessed by the evil spirit -- and the timid woman suddenly turns seductress. In the colorful but limited role as the incarnation of the ghostly femme fatale, Malini Sharma actually leaves a more lasting impression than Basu. Dino Morea is the appropriately handsome and vacant leading man, while Ashutosh Rana is quite entertaining in an over-the-top performance as the supernatural expert who uses limes in the way a beachcomber employs a metal detector.
Director Vikram Bhatt, the nephew of famed filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt (who penned Raaz), wisely avoids overselling his limited special effects, instead letting the atmosphere and actors do the bulk of the dirty work. A solid genre specialist (Ghulam [1998], Kasoor [2001]), Bhatt is more workmanlike than visionary, and provides no less or no more than what the uninspired material requires. The song-and-dance numbers are hummable and as relevant to the story as one could expect, but nothing about their picturization is particularly special. Bhatt does, however, rev things up for a suprisingly frenzied finale, which may seem more impressive due to the timidity of the events that precede it. Less surprising is the film's reversal of the original movie's dire warning to husbands about the dangers of infidelity. Opting for a more conservative approach, Raaz suggests that a wife should stand by her man no matter what he's done -- the better to keep those evil spirits from taking him away forever.
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DVD Specs:
Tips DVD
All Regions
Removable English subs (songs included)
Making of Raaz (in Hindi with no subtitles)
Raaz promos and trailers
Trailers for Kya Yehi Pyaar Hai; Haan...Maine Bhi Pyaar Kiya
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