Bhooty Call: Dybbuk

 Dybbuk: The Curse is Real (2021) begins as Bollywood movies about possession tend to begin; a young couple moves to a big house in a new place, and the husband spends all of his time at work, leaving his wife home alone to face the slow drip of supernatural activity.  In this case, the young couple are Sam Isaac (Emraan Hashmi) and his wife Mahi (Nikita Dutta).  Sam is a nuclear waste management specialist, and he's just taken a job at a storage facility in Mauritius.  Mahi feels alone and isolated, so she comforts herself by buying items for the new house, including an ornate wine box covered in Jewish iconography that she found at Vendredi Antiquesa local antique shop.

What Mahi doesn't know is that an employee of the antique store died violently after trying to open the box, which is the sort of information that really ought to be disclosed to a potential buyer.  Mahi takes the box home, opens it, and gets a nose full of dybbuk.  Suddenly Mahi is behaving very strangely, staring blankly and caressing the box.  And then she starts seeing a ghostly girl who follows her around and calls out for "Ezra."  Like all husbands in Bollywood possession movies, Sam assumes she's just being hysterical until he starts hearing footsteps in the attic at night, then he suddenly starts taking things seriously.

Sam talks about the haunting with his childhood priest, Father Gabriel (Denzil Smith).  Father Gabriel suspects that the ghost is a dybbuk, and sends Sam to Rabbi Benyamin (Anil George).  Benyamin listens to Sam's story and tells him that it can't be a dybbuk because a dybbuk can only possess someone whose body and soul are not quite in alignment.  Everyone is relieved until Sam learns that Mahi is pregnant, and Benyamin explains that it takes a while for a baby's body and soul to line up properly.

(The movie takes some pains to explain that the word "dybbuk" actually refers to the box, and the possessing spirit is a shedim.  Then everybody forgets that and keeps calling the spirit a dybbuk, which is just as well because the idea of a dybbuk box does not come from Jewish folklore, it comes from a fairly recent urban legend.)

Shortly after delivering the necessary exposition, Bemyamin dies, and it's hunky Rabbi Markus (Manuv Kaul) who must confront the ghost.  He doesn't go right away, though; he spends some weeks researching ways to get rid of the dybbuk without anybody dying.  Sam and Mahi manage to return to a sort of normalcy in the meantime, but when an obviously possessed Mahi goes on a late night barefoot walk through the city, Markus arrives just in time.

Markus does more research and discovers that the dybbuk was once Abraham Ezra (Imaad Shah), a nice Jewish boy who fell in love with Norah (Darshana Banik) before religious prejudice destroyed their lives.  He learns that Ezra the dybbuk is a weapon, shaped by his Kabbalist father (Yuri Suri) to find a host capable of destroying Mauritius.  And he just might have found the perfect candidate.

Despite the trappings of Judaism, the ghost in dybbuk works just like a common Bollywood bhoot, and it's dealt with in a similar way, only with menorahs instead of trishuls and Kabbalah rather than Tantric sorcery.   Ezra's history is the most effective use of the cultural background, tying in to the real-world history of Jews in Mauritius, and providing a parallel to Sam and Mahi's interfaith marriage.

While Dybbuk is a much more traditional ghost story than it would like you to think, it is a very well-crafted ghost story.  There are twists, but the twists are set up in advance and they make sense based on what has come before.  It's a movie that plays fair.

Bhooty Call: Raju Gari Gadhi 2

Raju Gari Gadhi 2 (2017) has basically nothing to do with Raju Gari Gadhi or Raju Gari Gadhi 3, apart from ghosts and the presence of actor Ashwin Babu.  Ashwin usually plays the hero, but here he's one of the three comic idiots, and nearly disappears when the movie shifts genres.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Ashwin (Ashwin Babu), Kishore (Vennela Kishore), and Praveen (Praveen) are three idiots and lifelong friends who have pooled their money to open up a resort hotel.  The three are varying degrees of horrible; Praveen likes to ogle the female guests, especially Suhanisa (Seerat Kapoor), Kishore is actively scheming to trick them into bed despite being married, while Ashwin saves his ogling for his online girlfriend (and the occasional Sunny Leone video.)  

Kishore convinces Suhanisa to come to his room and look at his etchingsastrology book, and while there he tries to take a picture, only to notice that she does not show up on camera.  he freaks out, and runs to tell the others that  Suhanisa is a ghost.  They mock him for it, but spooky stuff keeps happening, and after Ashwin's scantily clad Skype session with his girlfriend is interrupted by ghostly static and watery footprints moving across the ceiling, the trio call in the local Catholic priest (Avinash) to perform an exorcism. 

The priest is useless, so he suggests they contact Rudra (Nagarjuna).  Rudra bills himself as a mentalist, but he's basically every cop show gimmick from the past few decades wrapped up in a single person - he he profiles, he uses cold reading and interprets microexpressions, mixed with a bit of hypnotism and a smidgen of genuine psychic ability.  Once Rudra shows up, the movie changes genres and becomes a police procedural, with Rudra solving an unrelated murder in order to establish his bonafides.  

Once the murder is solved, Rudra arrives at the resort, where he quickly establishes that yes, the place is haunted, and no, Suhanisa isn't the ghost, you dorks.  He manages to cajole the actual ghost into making contact, and learns that her name is Amrutha (Samantha Ruth Prabhu), and that she was a brilliant law student before meeting her tragic end.  In life, Amrutha believed that any case could be solved by answering three questions: Who?  Why?  What did they gain?  And he is determined to those three questions on her behalf.

While Raju Gari Gadhi 2 shifts wildly from genre to genre, it's never particularly scary; it's hard to be frightening when the ghost is consistently the most likable and sympathetic character in the cast.  Still, it turns into a decent drama once it stops being an idiotic sex comedy.  On the other hand, the shifts in genre do create some cognitive dissonance.  One of the themes of the movie is that women should be treated as people rather than as attractive objects, but the early part of the movie still objectifies the hell out of Suhanisa, and the three idiots engage in some terrible behavior which is brushed off as just boys being boys.  It doesn't quite manage to live up to its own themes.

Bhooty Call: Bhoot Police

The "Scooby Doo" franchise is weird.  It's not just the talking dog, or the occasional continuity where the monsters are real, or the celebrity cameos, or Fred thinking that that ascot makes him look good.  The central premise of "Scooby Doo" is that the world is full of petty criminals and greedy real estate developers who use smoke and mirrors to pretend to be ghosts, and that there are enough fake ghosts to keep the meddling kids and their dog traveling around the country debunking, and yet the public never stops being fooled.  Bhoot Police (2021) may as well take place in the Scoobyverse, since there are enough fake ghosts scattered around India to support two fake exorcists.

Chiraunji (Arjun Kapoor) doesn't want to be a fake exorcist.  He's the son of the famous Ullat Baba, and he's spent years trying to decode the mysterious book his father left him  Older brother Vibhooti (Saif Ali Khan) is happy to be a fraud, though, and the pair travel around the country in a battered bhootmobile, exorcising fake ghosts, earning money and occasionally making peoples' lives better.  Chiraunji is always hoping the next ghost will be real.

At a Tantric fair, the brothers meet Maya (Yami Gautam), who is looking for someone to exorcise a Kichkandi (a kind of Nepali ghost) from her tea plantation.  Ullat Babu bound the Kichkandi twenty seven years ago, so Chirauni feels a sense of responsibility, while Vibhooti just wants to get away from police inspector Chedilal (Javed Jaffrey), who has been Captain Ahabing after them for a while now, for reasons that will eventually be made clear.

At the plantation, the brothers meet Kanika (Jacqueline Fernandez), aspiring social media star and Maya's older sister.  Kanika wants to sell the plantation and open a bar in London, but Maya wants to protect their father's legacy.  Vibhooti also befriends a mute little girl named Titli (Youngykar Dolma), who will be important later.

Two things quickly become clear.  First, the current haunting is another fake.  Second, something very bad happened here decades ago.  Unravelling these two truths is enough to strain the brothers' relationship to the breaking point, and that's when Chedilal finally shows up.

Bhoot Police is a horror comedy.  The comedy is very successful, thanks to strong performances by both the leads (Saif Ali is by turns despicable and delightful, but consistently amusing) and the supporting cast, particularly Jamie Lever and Rajpal Yadav.  It's also . . . reasonably scary.  There are some creepy bits, but the horror definitely takes a backseat to humor and character.

My one complaint is that I would have liked to see more of the Tantric fair.  It's a fascinating setting that could support a whole movie of its own, but here it's mostly used to facilitate a pretty good Indiana Jones joke.

Bhooty Call: Angulika

Angulika (2020) is just obscure enough that while there's an IMDB entry for the movie, it only lists about five actors and doesn't say which characters they play.  I have looked, but haven't found a cast list that's in a language I can read.  There are actors, they're great, but I can't tell you much more than that.  

Six hundred and twenty years ago, hedonistic king Kalindra is living in a cave, hiding from the sun.  he was cursed by someone named Angulika after doing something extremely bad; this part of the movie is heavy on dodgy CGI and light on exposition.  It is clear that Angulika is related to the sun god, and that's why the sun burns Kalindra whenever it touches him. Kalindra's loyal ministers arrive with a group of mystics in tow, and the mystics have a suggestion.  The way for Kalindra to escape his curse is to die, hang out in a grave for a few centuries, and then, on the eve of the next Angulika Eclipse, wait for Angulika's reincarnation to pass close to his grave, allowing him to return from the dead, kill her again, and gain power over the entire world.  (Is Angulika named after the eclipse, or is the eclipse named after Angulika?  That's the kind of detail that would be included in exposition.) Everyone agrees that this is a sensible plan, and so they carry it out.

Centuries pass, and Pravalikka is on her way to visit her family's ancestral palace, accompanied by her husband Balu and their young son Rahul.  Pravalikka is Angulika's reincarnation, and so Kalindra's spirit is awakened.  His ghostly voice lures little Rahul into the woods.  Rahul knocks a small hole in  Kalindra's tomb, unleashing the ghost, and spooky things begin to happen.

And then, suddenly, it's ten days later.  Pravalikka and her family are missing, and because her father is the Home Minister, it's a political matter.  The case is assigned to Priya and Gautham, two "young, dynamic officers with tech knowledge," as the subtitles put it.  Priya in particular is affected by the case.  (It turns out that she and Pravalikka have been friends for years, but nobody mentions this until quite late in the movie, because the filmmakers are adamantly opposed to providing helpful exposition.)  

Priya and Gautham travel to the palace.  They meet an angry holy man, Gautham fights some thugs, and then they run into the film's excruciating comic relief, three filmmakers who are scouting for locations for a horror movie, and then for some reason cops and comic relief all decide to camp out in the woods together.  (the camping trip provides the excuse for a musical number, so I am not complaining, but it's still a weird choice.)

Priya and Gautham are clearly on the right track, because they're pulled form the case after two days.  Priya insists on continuing, and in the process, she manages to attract the attention of the evil ghost, and Gautham takes her to a psychologist.  And then, finally, over an hour into the movie, we get a bit of exposition when the psychologist arranges a telepathic link between Priya and Pravalikka's maid Shantha, because that is totally a thing that psychologists can do.  Thanks to the telepathy, they learn what happened during the missing ten days, and realize that they're actually working two cases, one a mundane murder, and the other a supernatural struggle for the fate of the world.

The main plot, with an angry ghost seeking revenge on the reincarnation of the woman who thwarted him, is lifted shamelessly from 2009's Arundhati, to the point that ghost-kalindra is doing an impression of Arundhati's villain.  The investigators, one a believer and one a skeptic, are Mulder and Scully by way of Anjaan: Special Crimes Unit's Vikrant and Aditi.  The powerful mystical ring pulled out of the water nods strongly in the direction of Tolkien.  And horror filmmakers being menaced by genuine horrors is such a cliche that I just reviewed a spoof of that very plot point last week.

Despite the plethora of influences and the scriptwriter's dogged insistence on never explaining anything until the very last moment, Angulika does eventually make a bit of sense, at which point the movie switches genres and becomes a devotional movie instead.  Sometimes you just have to go where the movie takes you.

Bhooty Call: Shaitaan Haveli

At this point "a film crew working on a horror movie stumbles across an actual, supernatural horror" is not a new or original premise, and Shaitaan Haveli (2018) doesn't pretend otherwise.  There is a twist, though: the movie within the TV series is a schlocky, exploitative gorefest inspired by the eighties output of the famous Ramsay brothers, and so is the actual horror they uncover.

B-movie director Hariman Singh (Singh Bhupesh) and his trusty cameraman Gangu (Kanchan Pagare) are in trouble.  Hariman's last film, an attempt at a legitimate family drama (but sexy!), was a massive flop, and he owes money to violent and short-tempered gangster Ponty (Adi Irani), and the only way to pay himm back is to make a horror movie on an incredibly low budget and pray for a hit.  Unfortunately, part of the deal is that the hero will be played by Ponty's musclebound and muscle-headed son Monty (Hemant Koumar).  

Hariman also casts Monty's English girlfriend Julia (Pippa Hughes), but an Indian audience expects an Indian leading lady, so he recruits troubled TV actress Prarthana (Neha Chauhan) as the main love interest.  Struggling actor Rahul (series creator Varun Thakur) is cast as the hero's friend.  And faded actor Mukesh (Zahid Ali), who played the lead in Hariman's early hits, is cast as Dracula.  And Hariman has found a great deal on a ruined haveli to use as a filming location; it's cheap because it's supposed to be haunted.

The shoot is an absolute disaster.  Monty is not just arrogant, lazy, and easily distracted, he's also a terrible actor.  Prarthana, meanwhile, is a terrible human being, and she immediately latches on to Monty as the apparent Most Important Person in the area, practically shoving Julia out of the way as she does so.  Rahul is a great actor, but Monty insists on stealing all his lines and speeches.

And then there's Mukesh.  Mukesh is increasingly frustrated because Hariman refuses to give him any lines, only letting him growl and laugh evilly.  Mukesh is just starting to realize that he's never going to be the leading man again, and that's when the haveli's housekeeper Mahua (Shweta Singh) reveals that she is secretly an evil witch, and she offers to restore Mukesh's youth if he will help to secure five sacrifices in order to bring back her master, evil Tantric Chandaal (Surender Thakur).  Mukesh eagerly agrees, but he's not very good at it, so it takes a while before the supporting actors start dying.

Shaitaan Haveli is a love letter to eighties Bollywood horror in all its tawdry glory, but it's also a very silly show.  Chandaal and Mahua try, bless their monstrous hearts, but they're every bit as neurotic as the film crew, and it's hard to recline in dark satanic majesty when you're also squabbling about centuries-old relationship issues.

There is one exception to Shaitaan Haveli's devotion to the tropes of Ramsay horror.  This series has an awful lot of zombies in it, and while they were called out of their graves through the power of Chandaal's magical gemstone, they're obviously Hollywood zombies, complete with a bite that causes rapid zombification.  That particular species of walking dead just wasn't a thing in the Indian horrorsphere of the eighties, but if it had been a trend, the Ramsays would have happily exploited it.