Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani (2002) has an amazing cast, including such big names as Akshay Kumar, Sunil Shetty, Manisha Koirola, Arshad Warsi, and Aftab Shivdasani, along with a veritable who's who of Bollywood supporting players, including brief appearances by local favorites Amrish Puri and Johny Lever. And I can't quite figure out why. Did they all lose a bet? Were they being blackmailed? Have they been cursed by a wicked witch? Are they professional actors who took a job working with an otherwise well-regarded director because they wanted to be paid? It is a mystery.
The plot is also kind of hard to figure out, but I will do my best. Our thirtysomething actors are part of a large group of college students. The boys all have distinct character traits; Atul (Akshay Kumar) is a charming atheist, Prem (Aftab Shivdasani) is a hapless would be romantic, Vijay (Sunil Shetty) is tough, Abdul (Arshad Warsi) is annoying, Ashok (Aditya Pancholi) is a rich jerk, Rajesh (Rajat Bedi) is a bully with a talent for mimicry, and so on. (This movie has a big cast) The girls, on the other hand, are mostly defined by their relationships with men, apart from Divya (Manisha Koirola). She's tough, fearless, kind, and doomed, and also happens to be engaged to businessman Karan Saxena (Sunny Deol.) (And I appreciate that they didn't even try to convince us that Sunny Deol is a college student.)
Rajesh and his sidekick Madan (Siddharth Ray) break into the girls' hostel and attempt to rape Divya, only to be stopped and beaten to a pulp by Karan, who drags them to . . . the college principal? And then convinces the principal to expel them rather than press charges? And then, when the would be rapists beg not to be expelled because it would ruin their careers, he sends them to ask forgiveness from Divya, and then all her friends pressure her to forgive them and everybody carries on as if nothing happened. Seriously, what the hell, movie?
Late at night, Divya follows a mysterious voice into a nearby park (which is pretty clearly a painted set, but it's a nice painted set). The voice belongs to Kapil (Arman Koli), a magical shapechanging snake and Divya's lover in a previous life; long story short, they were dancing and singing through a mystical realm of dodgy computer graphics and accidentally disturbed the meditations of Amrish Puri, who cursed them.
Now Divya is torn between her supernatural lover and Sunny Deol, and that's when her idiot friends call to invite her to a party. Unfortunately, she winds up talking to Rajesh, who uses his mimicry skills to convince her that she's talking to the whole group, and they all want her to show up an hour early. She does, Rajesh and Madan attack her, and she kills herself, living just long enough for the whole group to arrive so she can swear vengeance on them all. Kapil shows up to kill Madan, just to get the ball rolling.
From here, the film becomes a straight supernatural revenge thriller, with Kapil the serpent and Divya's angry ghost picking off the friends one by one. The twist is that the men who actually attacked her get killed right away, while the rest of the friends are not technically guilty of the crime Divya thinks they are guilty of. Though when I think back to the "forgive your rapist" scene, I can't help but feel that she still has a point, since none of this would have happened if Rajesh and Madan were in jail where they belong.
The problem is that the cast is huge; normally with this sort of movie the supernatural creatures are working through a group of six or so, but this group is at least twice as big. The movie never focuses on anyone for very long, and as a result it's hard to tell who the actual protagonist is supposed to be.
Ninety percent of Jaani Dushman is fun bad movie; the special effects are atrocious, the only acting is overacting, and Kapil the ancient shapechanging serpent who spent a thousand years trapped in a tree spends most of the movie dressed up like Neo from The Matrix for no apparent reason. The other ten percent can get a bit heavy, though; the actual assault isn't very graphic, but watching everyone in Divya's life fail to support her is infuriating.
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