Bhoot Part One The Haunted Ship Movie Review: These Bhoots Are Made For Walking!

Bhoot Part One  The Haunted Ship

Starring: Vicky Kaushal, Ashutosh Rana, Meher Vij

Directed  by Bhanu Pratap Singh

Rating: * ½ (one and a half stars)

Movie Review: Karan Johar is into  horror now.A  lot of people  thought Kalank was his first horror film(I didn’t,I liked it for what  it was,  a failed romance). But his initiation  into the arena of spook  began with Ghost Stories last month. Now in his first full-fledged  fear-fest, Karan  Johar is  fully  into the  think of things on a haunted ship which, like Karan’s  Kalank, docks  into Mumbai un-navigated.

Also Read: Ayushmann Versus Vicky Kaushal, And Ayushmann Has The Edge

Instead of drowning the ship in the ocean(maybe tie the  monster contraption to a few boulders ) the  film’s  naval hero Prithvi played by  the  up and  coming Vicky Kaushal , drowns his dread  of the dead in drinks.No wonder he starts seeing evil spirits  at home and on the ship.If you spend too much time with memories you become  a ghost.

Also Read: Katrina-Vicky Kaushal To Go Official?

Best friend Riaz(tokenism at  its most glaring) clutches  Prithvi and  sobs, “Tu kitna  bhi paagal ho jayega main tumhara  saath nahin chodunga.”  Riaz’s wife looks seriously worried.Is her husband seeing things too?

We are  certainly not seeing Prithvi is, namely a  very dangerous evil spirit stalking the  deserted ship like the  Ranaut sisters  on  social media. Evil has many designs and  it’s hard  to predict where  it will come hit you from.Ask Hrithik Roshan.

In  the meanwhile Vicky Kaushal foolishly keeps going back to the  ship with its  monstrously  creaky and ferociously freaky interiors. Full marks to the art designer whose  eye for detail is  decidedly  dishy. The cinematography  by Pushkar Singh, a  synthesis  of sepia scares  and  brightly lit ruins,is also top-notch.Wish the same  could be said about the  direction which skirts  sloppiness .As for  the “dangerous” spirit on  the ship, she is  no more dangerous than your wife watching Game Of Thrones  in bed  while you snore.

And  therein lies  the  problem . This is  a film as harmless as  a game of  bingo that your mom organized  in the backyard , where tempers were frayed. But really, who was afraid? The scares in Bhoot come  exactly  four times  , and each time they are generated  with heightened sound and a  creature rushing out at us  like a snarling   goalkeeper at a  football game  who  just realized the whole team from the opposite end  is showing him the finger.

 That’s what Bhoot, etc  does to us. It mocks at  the horror genre  by resorting to  the   most trite tropes and standard  shock tactics of  the  genre and  it  mocks our  definition of  bereavement  by  converting it  into a currency for corny scares. The  first-half does have a  few touching moments  showing  Kaushal’s Prithvi grieving for his  wife and daughter who  died in a raft accident.  But the second half moves from the raft to a scare-inducing craft on a  ship that looks almost as deserted as  the theatre where I saw  Karan Johar’s silly scare attempts.

 Part  1  is done. Part 2 anyone?  Ram  Gopal Varma is  forgiven.