At first glance, A Flat (2010) looks like a typical
modern Indian ghost story, right down to the angry vengeful ghost’s long
black hair and bad posture. And honestly, the story is very
traditional, but it’s told in a very different way. Not entirely
successful, mind you, but it is different.
Prompted by a bad dream, Rahul (Jimmy Shergill) calls his former girlfriend Preity (Kaveri Jha) and learns that she’s getting married, and that she really doesn’t want to speak to him. Rahul immediately makes plans to leave America and return to India, but by the time his plane lands, Preity has vanished and his father (Sachin Khedekar) has been horribly murdered while preparing Rahul’s apartment, which means that a romantic reunion is pretty much off the table.
After his father’s funeral, Rahul visits the apartment, and discovers that it’s full of flashbacks. He basically wanders from room to room while remembering every stage of his (not entirely healthy, as it turns out) relationship with Preity.
He also keeps finding strands of long black hair throughout the apartment, and it’s clear to the viewer, but not to Rahul, that there’s something supernatural and really ticked off lurking in the background.
Preity finally calls. Rahul makes arrangements to meet her, but both the elevator and the stairs lead him directly back to his 17th floor apartment. The ghost begins haunting in earnest, and herds Rahul into the bedroom, where he discovers a diary belonging to Geetika (Hazel Croney), a simple, free spirited village belle who was rescued from an angry mob by Karan (Sanjay Suri), Rahul’s good friend and the guy who rented the apartment while Rahul was in America. That means more flashbacks, as Rahul learns how the happy filmi romance of Geetika and Karan went horribly, horribly wrong.
There are a lot of flashbacks in this movie. Most of the character development is discovered through flashback, rather than a more linear presentation of events. On the positive side, that means that the main plot itself is incredibly focused on the worst afternoon of Rahul’s life, so much so that it practically follows the Aristotelian Unities.
On the other hand, the movie is just over an hour and a half long, and with so many flashbacks, that means there’s time for maybe twenty minutes of scary stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a scary twenty minutes, but it’s still only twenty minutes.
Prompted by a bad dream, Rahul (Jimmy Shergill) calls his former girlfriend Preity (Kaveri Jha) and learns that she’s getting married, and that she really doesn’t want to speak to him. Rahul immediately makes plans to leave America and return to India, but by the time his plane lands, Preity has vanished and his father (Sachin Khedekar) has been horribly murdered while preparing Rahul’s apartment, which means that a romantic reunion is pretty much off the table.
After his father’s funeral, Rahul visits the apartment, and discovers that it’s full of flashbacks. He basically wanders from room to room while remembering every stage of his (not entirely healthy, as it turns out) relationship with Preity.
He also keeps finding strands of long black hair throughout the apartment, and it’s clear to the viewer, but not to Rahul, that there’s something supernatural and really ticked off lurking in the background.
Preity finally calls. Rahul makes arrangements to meet her, but both the elevator and the stairs lead him directly back to his 17th floor apartment. The ghost begins haunting in earnest, and herds Rahul into the bedroom, where he discovers a diary belonging to Geetika (Hazel Croney), a simple, free spirited village belle who was rescued from an angry mob by Karan (Sanjay Suri), Rahul’s good friend and the guy who rented the apartment while Rahul was in America. That means more flashbacks, as Rahul learns how the happy filmi romance of Geetika and Karan went horribly, horribly wrong.
There are a lot of flashbacks in this movie. Most of the character development is discovered through flashback, rather than a more linear presentation of events. On the positive side, that means that the main plot itself is incredibly focused on the worst afternoon of Rahul’s life, so much so that it practically follows the Aristotelian Unities.
On the other hand, the movie is just over an hour and a half long, and with so many flashbacks, that means there’s time for maybe twenty minutes of scary stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a scary twenty minutes, but it’s still only twenty minutes.
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