A sequel to the 2008 horror film ‘1920’,
‘1920 - Evil Returns’ revolves around the love story between a poet Jaidev
Verma and a young violin teacher Smruti. Although the two have never seen each
other, their love story blossoms through the letters, filled with romantic
poetry, which they send each other. However, Smruti gets possessed by an evil
spirit!
This film gets just about everything wrong.
The dialogues, in particular, are laughably bad. The acting doesn’t salvage
anything either. Tia Bajpai tries hard to look convincing as the possessed girl
but her performance gets overshadowed by the bizarre screenplay.
Renowned poet Jaidev Verma (Aftab
Shivdasani) is deeply in love with a young violin teacher Smruti (Tia Bajpai).
The problem is that he has never seen her before. So, the two lovers keep in
touch through letters. An unexpected situation leads to Smruti getting
possessed by an evil spirit. Somehow, she lands up at Jaidev’s house. However,
since she has lost her memory there’s no way either Jaidev or she will know who
the other person is. The evil spirit, who eventually turns out to be Jaidev’s
old friend Amar, wreaks havoc all over. She spits nails, levitates in the air,
and gets fits and the usual razzmatazz.
So you have the tantrik, doctor, concerned
family members, suspecting maidservants lined up. All of them have their own
take on how to get rid of the ‘evil spirit’. The inane plot is filled with
silly dialogues. Some will make you guffaw, but after a while, it gets to your
nerves. The first-half is still bearable, notwithstanding the stupefying lines
and the unwanted Sufiyana ballads.
However, the second half tests your patience to the core and completely
annihilates all your hopes to the ‘point of no return’. The premise is like any
other Bollywood horror film. Over the last few years, a new genre has come up.
It is called the 'Unintentionally funny horror film with sexual undertones'.
Vidya Malvade, who plays Jaidev Verma’s sister Karuna, delivers an appalling
performance. For a moment, you would still blame the writers. But then, going
by record in Hindi films post the brilliant ‘Chak De India’, she is just not up
to it. Aftab Shivdasani tries hard to look serious while doing inexplicable
things on screen, but fails miserably. Tia Bajpai delivers a fine performance
as the possessed girl, but the story and the screenplay is way too absurd to
accommodate her efforts.
It’s a badly written ‘horror film’. Filled with
unintentional laughs, the ‘scary’ scenes lack the thrill.
Writing, as already mentioned, is quite
bizarre. The bad acting doesn’t leave any stone unturned either. Bhushan Patel
repeats the same formula that Vikram Bhatt films are known for. Although such
films work with the masses, ideally, there should be something ‘horrific’ about
a horror film.
The horror, over here, lies in the script. Music by Chirantan
Bhatt is average with no memorable track in the entire film. The film has been
shot well by Naren Gedia. The gorgeous locales at Sweden up the visual quotient
of the film considerably.
The film is nothing like ‘1920’. In all
probability, the evil shall not return again.
Shivom
Oza
acceptable movie, you can watch this movie and wont regret it but plot and screenplay at times seems to be very predictive and poor.
ReplyDelete