Saturday, August 23, 2008
If you want to watch Phoonk, a word of caution is that it is not for those having the power of understanding or those who want to be one.
Ramu said through the movie that it’s not only a horror genre story but also the title ‘Phoonk’ and it’s has chilling background score and intruding camera placements.
This time round Ramu has played with the camera angles than restrict actors into tight close-up shots.
Phoonk starts as a simple story of Rajiv (Sudeep) who is a construction engineer in Mumbai. Rajiv is a profit minded business man and a core atheist.
During his construction work a stone shaped Ganesha is found, but he refuses to oblige to build a temple over it at request of his own workers.
On the opposite way his wife, Arati (Amruta Khanvilkar) is a normal house wife, who believes in God and his unseen holy powers. There are a loving daughter Raksha (Ehsaas), younger son Rohan and their grandmother Amma in this family. Rajiv does not believe in the way his mother wants to educate his kids by telling stories of mythological characters and presence of evil to make one believe in God and his mythical powers.
There are also Vinay Dev (Ganesh Yadav), Rajiv’s lawyer-cum-legal advisor and a close friend, and a husband-wife duo of Anshuman (Kenny Desai) and Madhu (Ashwini Kalsekar) who are Rajiv’s close and trusted associates at his company.
After some time Rajiv bags a huge contract of constructing a mini-city project and gives a grand party at his house to celebrate this.
But after few days, his maid notices a few nail-pierced lemons and sprinkled vermillion with bones stewed in his compound. Everyone is scared of such unholy substances, but Rajiv believed to be items used for black magic outside his compound and reprimands everyone for believing in such illogical things.
But after the death of a guy who was to join Rajiv as Anshuman’s replacement at work in a construction site, and his daughter Raksha has periodic conflicts of change in behaviour, he forced to think. Rajiv makes him rush to doctors for his daughter’s condition, but Dr. Pandey (K.K Raina) brushes off the claims of any danger only as Raksha’s not being prepared for her exams and nothing else.
Amma believes her grand-daughter is suffering by an evil spirit and has no medical treatment will help.
The film thrills you in the form of how members of the family meet with unusual experiences and how insecure they feel about in their own house.
Meanwhile the sequences happen, and turns Rajiv into a believer of the supernatural while Arati turns to Science alone cured her daughter.
Over all the film ends with the audience thinking and wanting to know more of what will be the next.
Raksha’s performance is outstanding as an effective young actor in her part of being a kid possessed with evil forces. Kannada actor Sudeep makes a wonderful debut in ‘Phoonk’. Amruta and rest of the cast do their job well.
It is a one-time watchable for anyone who likes horror films.