Taran Adarsh Raaz 3 Review - Page 5

(1/5)

In a display of rare secularism for a religious horror film, a Hindu tantrik takes the heroine to a Christian cemetery. The heroine is under a spell of black magic. The baba ties a knot between his wrist and the heroine's so they can lie on the ground, and together enter and explore the world of spirits, so he can rescue her from there. The chants in the background sound Buddhist.
During this daring process, the priest gets suddenly beheaded — there's nothing over his neck. The hero and the heroine rush out of the cemetery. This must've been a traumatic experience. You'd imagine they would be shivering in shock at home. No. The hero's Emraan Hashmi. The female lead (Esha Gupta) looks suspiciously like Mrinalini Sharma, who made her debut with Raaz (2002). This is Raaz 3. Hashmi immediately locks his lips with the heroine's. Romantic music takes over right then. They make intensely passionate love. The audience laughs. If only comedies could produce the kind of laughs this horror of horrors often does. Like me, everyone must have walked into the cinema, nearly empty, late in the night, with no one even in the hallways of the mall, hoping to get scared. They see no ghosts. Everyone looks bored.
Here's how this shindig starts. At a film award ceremony, Bipasha Basu (who plays a Bollywood star called Shania Shekhar) hopes to get the best actor prize. Her step-sister and main rival (Esha Gupta) picks up the prize yet again, for the third time in a row. This is when you realise if the top acting honours in any film industry are usually shared between these two leading ladies – then God must save the films. But sadly that's not what this movie's about.
It's God who has let Bipasha's Shania Shekhar down, an old man tells her outside the film award show. She visits a spirit who gives her a black magic drink that she administers on her closest rival through her boyfriend (Hashmi, who plays a filmmaker yet again). It's a good way to get rid of competition. The hero keeps slipping in black magic soda in the girl's drinks while he keeps falling further in love with her. Usually horror films have non-believers. Even the doctor, when told of the black magic soda, whispers, "I believe you." I want to as well.
Black magic soda causes hypnosis and paranoia. The new top heroine keeps going nuts. At one point she takes her clothes off at a filmi party because she sees strange flies all around her. Audiences are supposed to enjoy this gaze. They can't stop laughing. The heroine's career goes for a toss. Anybody's would, if they worked on a movie like this.