Bollywood Horror

It's Hallowe'en season! It's one of my favourite events/festivals (I also celebrate the pagan festival Samhain, precursor of Hallowe'en), so in celebration of that, I thought I'd do my first post on Bollywood horror.


Note: These videos don't have English subtitles (apart from Stree) but you should be able to understand what's basically going on. :)


Raaz (2002)

Raaz ("Secret" in English) is about couple Aditya Dhanranj (played by Dino Morea) and Sanjana  (Bipasha Basu) who are having problems in their marriage and on the brink of getting divorced. They go to stay in Ooty hoping to repair things, but Sanjana starts to experience strange things and believes she is being haunted by a female spirit. It turns out that a girl has previously been attacked in the woods, reportedly by a ghost. Furthermore Aditya has a secret which is about to come out...

Here's a song from the film, Aapke Pyaar Mein Hum, featuring Dino and actress Malini Sharma. The playback singer is Alka Yagnik.

Also check out Jo Bhi Kasmein Khai Thi, another song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mje4yC8NG_s



Raaz is the first film in a series directed by Vikram Bhatt and it's the only one I've seen so far. (No 5 has just been announced). It's based on Hollywood movie What Lies Beneath starting Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford (I've seen that several times; it's good). I think I saw Raaz as part of a Hallowe'en Bollywood season years ago.

Random fact: Dino and Bipasha once dated. She's now married to her co-star in Alone (see below).


Raaz: The Mystery Continues (2009)


No 2 in the series. Model Nandita (Kangana Ranaut) is dating Yash (Adhyayan Suman) who hosts the TV show Andhviswas which attempts to disprove supernatural beliefs. She becomes pregnant but is also going through a difficult time- she is being stalked and finds mysterious wounds on her body. 

 

Then she meets artist Prithvi (played by Emraan Hashmi) who has sketches of a girl who looks just like her. He believes that his paintings predict the future and something bad will happen to Nandita, but is he telling the truth?

Here is Maahi, a song from the film. The singer is Toshi.

You can watch the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkv6IbFN2I0

I would like to see this, so will look out for it on TV, or maybe it will come on Sky On Demand. (Could watch it online but I prefer watching films on TV!).


Darna Mana Hai (2003)

I've seen this translated as "Fear is Forbidden" but am seeing it online as "Fright is Forbidden" (it's also been translated as "You must not be frightened", so all the same thing! It's a horror anthology directed by Ram Gopal Varma. The "wraparound story" is that 6 students have taken refuge in an abandoned building and are telling each other stories.

There are 6 stories and I'll list them briefly below.

On The Way- married couple Karan (played by Sohail Khan, brother of Salman) and Anjali (Antara Mali) get lost in the forest.

No Smoking- the tale of a photographer (Saif Ali Khan) who runs into trouble while staying at an inn where smoking is banned.

Homework- Teacher Dayashankar Pandey (Raghubir/Raghuvir Yadav) is reminded of past events he'd rather forget when dealing with student Pramila and her homework.

Apples- Housewife Gayathri (Shilpa Shetty) is  haunted by apples after buying some from a strange market vendor.

Ghostly Lift-  Amar (Vivek Oberoi) meets John (played by Nana Patekar) in a graveyard and gives him a lift. Things take a strange turn when John claims to be dead. But all is not what it seems...

Stop/Move- Purab (Aftab Shivasdani) is in a bad way after being rejected by his girlfriend Abilasha (Isha Koppikar who is also in Darling). But then he discovers that he has the power to freeze people simply by saying, "Stop!". How will he use his newfound ability?

                                                          Apples story- has no English subtitles unfortunately.


Also here's Ghostly Lift: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcTyxEvR6D0

And this is Jo Dar Gaya Voh Mar Gaya, a song from the movie. The video stars Sameera Reddy and the playback singers are Sunidhi Chauhan, Ninad Kamat and Naresh Kamath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXd4p0t6hIY


It 's quite a few years since I've seen this. I think it was shown on TV (maybe Channel 4?) as part of a Bollywood horror season around Hallowe'en one year, along with Bhoot (see below) and Raaz (see above). The stories that I remember the most are Apples and Stop/Move. I think Stop/Move is similar to a Twilight Zone episode. (Not sure, will have to check that).


Darna Zaroori Hai (2006

 There's also Darna Zaroori Hai (translated as You Gotta Be Scared or Getting Scared is Necessary) which I haven't seen. (See above for Darna Marna Hai). Similar format with children sheltering from the rain in a bungalow, and being told stories by an old woman. Actors include Amitabh Bachchan, Arjun Rampal,  Bispasha Basu, Anil Kapoor and Mallika Sherawat.

Check out the trailer below:

Update 26/6/20: The video has been removed and I can't upload another one directly on here, but you can view the trailer on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSy2voxFl5c

This is Aa Aake Darr starring Priyanka (also known as Nisha) Kothari as an item girl. The playback singer is Mohana Sarkar.

Update 15/1/22: I had to replace the video and the title is written a bit differently.

                                   
You can read about the film in detail here, but it does contain spoilers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darna_Zaroori_Hai


Bhoot (2003)

Bhoot translates as "Ghost" in English and stars Urmila Matondkar as Swati, who moves into a flat with her husband Vishal (Ajay Devgn). The apartment has a bad history, since a woman named Manjeet who previously lived there, killed her son and then committed suicide. Swati soon begins acting strangely and Vishal comes to believe she's been possessed by Manjeet. The film is also directed by Ram Gopal Varma.

Update 15/1/22: Video playback is disabled on 3rd party sites but you can still watch fine on YouTube.

It's quite a while since I saw this as well (as mentioned above). I think I have seen it a couple of times though.


Bhoot Returns (2006)

Sequel to Bhoot, although it's a different story, so not an actual sequel. A family consisting of architect Tarun Awasthi (played by J.D. Chakravarthy who directed a segment of Darna Zaroori Hai), Namrata (Manisha Korala) and their children son Taman and daughter Nimmi (Alayana Sharma) move into a bungalow. Nimmi finds a doll and also makes an imaginary friend. named Shabbu. But after a series of unusual events and Nimmi behaving strangely, Namrata and Tarun start to suspect that Shabbu is not imaginary after all...

I saw Bhoot Returns earlier this year. I'd say Bhoot is better but still worth a watch. :)


Darling (2007)

Fardeen Khan stars in the film as Aditya ("Adit"), who is married to Ashwini (Isha/Eesha Koppikar) but having an affair with his secretary Geeta (Esha Deol). When Geeta gets pregnant and refuses to abort the baby, she and Aditya fight and he accidentally kills her. Geeta's ghost then starts haunting him, intent on getting revenge.


I've featured Darling and music videos from the movie in previous posts. Check them out at the links below:

 Aa Khushi Se Khudkhusi Kar Le music video: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2013/06/j-pop-vs-bollywood.html

More Hallowe'en Films + TV: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/10/more-halloween-films.html

Tadap Tadap video: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/11/weekly-music-video.html


Pizza (2014)

Remake of the 2012 Tamil film of the same name. Kunal (played by Indian American actor Akshay Oberoi, cousin of Vivek Oberoi) is a pizza delivery man whose wife Nikita/ Nikki (Parvathy Omanakuttan) has just found out she's pregnant. 

 

Nikki wants to be a writer and is doing research for a horror story. She believes in the supernatural while Kunal doesn't and he is freaked out when she claims something  scary is going to happen to him.  One night he makes to a delivery to a house of a pregnant woman and proceeds to get very scared!

I can't seem to find a proper trailer of this on YouTube, but here's a video that shows a few scenes:

And here's the trailer for the original Tamil Pizza: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wI6erLw7PU


I watched Pizza one night a few months ago on B4U Movies. It didn't have subtitles but I got the basic gist of it, and looked it up online the next day. There are several twists in the story.


Alone (2015)

Another one starring Bipasha Basu. She plays a woman called Sanjana (for the 2nd time, also see Raaz!), whose conjoined twin Anjana did during an operation to separate them several years ago. She feels guilty because it was her who pushed for the operation. When Sanjana's mother had an accident, she  and her husband Kabir (Karan Singh Grover who is now married to Bipasha in real life) come back to her childhood home to see her. But Sanjana finds herself haunted by something and believes it may be her dead twin out for revenge.

 Katra Katra song. The singers are Ankit Tiwari and Prakriti Kakar.

I saw this a couple of months ago. Like Pizza, it has a twist to the story. It hasn't got the best reviews and there are better films, but it's something to watch if you like similar films. :)


Stree (2018)

Stree is a new film released this summer. It's a horror comedy based on the true story of a town called Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh, where men have started disappearing.  The inspiration is also an Indian folk legend called Nale Ba.  It's about a mysterious woman nicknamed Stree,  a witch who tries to lure men out of their houses by calling their names in the voices of their relatives. Nale Ba means something like "Come Tomorrow" in Kannada and this is what people would write on their houses to prevent Stree from accomplishing her goal.

Rajkummar Rao stars as Vicky, a tailor who falls in love with a mystery woman (played by Shraddha Kapoor) who only appears during festival time. When one of his friends goes missing he decides to investigate the Stree legend.

Here's a trailer (with subtitles!):

 

This is the music video for Kamariya, a Weekly Music Video in August: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/09/weekly-music-video_5.html


Hope you like the list. :) There 's also Vaastu Shastra but this post is quite long already, so I'll save that for another post! What are your favourite Bollywood horrors?



Want more Bollywood? Check out these links:

Bollywood/Hollywood Thrillers: https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2017/09/bollywoodhollywood-thrillers.html

Bollywood Round-up 2018- Part 1 (Part 2 coming later this year!): https://starsparklex.blogspot.com/2018/08/bollywood-round-up-2018-part-1.html