Movie Ragini MMS - Review

The visual is of a close watch camera looking down on an empty room. It cycles through a series of such cameras, all of which show similarly empty rooms and corridors, except for a bedroom shot where a couple is shown 'getting eventful' on the bed. The visual keeps cycling, before reaching one dark shot where, you suddenly spot a shadowy, pale figure standing in the distance and it warbles a mysterious phrase in a voice that gives you goose bumps as Main chudail nahin hoon.

Though the movie might have made more news for it's alleged nudity, most of which seems to have ended up on the Censor board's cutting room floor, Ragini MMS is eventually a horror movie filled with hair raising moments like the one above. Though the concept of the movie is hardly original, melding together elements of 2007's low budget surprise hit Paranormal Activity and 1999's numbing documentary The Blair Witch Project, the way that director Pavan Kripalani handles the horror gives it a rather Indian feel.

The 'found footage' technique that Kripalani uses, lends itself easily to the horror genre. Though a first for Bollywood, the technique is now a staple of Hollywood horror and was seen in Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch, both. The idea is to shoot using small handheld and surveillance cameras to give the visuals the feel of the characters themselves filming the proceedings. When tragedy and terror befall these characters, the footage is proverbially 'found', to be viewed by all later. The idea of the characters themselves holding the camera allows the film's spirits to quite literally creep up on them, and the viewing viewers, both, in scenes that can make one jump out of one's skin.

Kripalani's movie is set in an deserted house on an isolated plantation outside Mumbai. The titular Ragini, played by the beautiful Kainaz Motiwala, has been brought there by her 'boyfriend' Uday, who is a struggling actor, for the weekend. What Ragini doesn't know, however, is that Uday, played by Raj Kumar Yadav, is hoping to make a quick buck and land himself an acting break, all by shooting a sex tape with her, using cameras planted all over the house. Unluckily, what Uday doesn't know either is that he and Ragini are not alone in the house, which was the setting for some grizzly occurrences involving witchcraft and sacrifice years earlier? When the stairs start creaking, doors slam themselves shut and they started getting attacked by unseen hands, the cameras continue to record Uday and Ragini's frightening nightmare.

Kripalani deserves full marks for getting the terror factor right on target with Ragini. Though it might be formulaic abroad, the film's concept is a first for desi viewers. The minimal cast, limited to the leading pair for ninety percent of the movie, along with the empty frames, just adds to the building feeling of horror when things start going wrong. The set frames that are seen through the surveillance cameras also do their part, allowing the spirit around the house to appear without warning in bone chilling sequences. Kripalani even uses sound and music to horrifying effect, using a mix of silence and sounds to foreshadow the occurrences around the house and turning even a creaking door into heart stopping horror.

The film's two lead stars play their part excellently. Though the screaming and shouting require a lot of subtle acting skills, the two express their fear at being trapped in the house flawlessly. Kainaz, who has a longer role as Ragini, is especially superb in the second half of the movie, when she finds herself trapped in the bedroom of the house with no escape and left to her own devices. Her screams and pleas for release are haunting and horrifying in themselves.

Still, the measure of a horror movie is in the way it haunts its viewers, and Ragini MMS scores in full here. The movie sets new standards for how terrifying Bollywood horror.
 
It is worthy to see once for experiencing terror and horror.