I knew Guddu Dhanoa as a man with a sensible taste when it comes to
action flicks. And with Jaal, though everything does not hit the right
notes, the taste still seems to be there. But that clicks only when it comes
to action flicks, but when it does not, boy, the worst happens.
Dhanoa tries his hand at the horror genre with a flick that is senseless from the word go.
Sanjana (Tabu) is a divorcee who comes with her two kids and younger
brother (Emran Khan) to live in this bungalow in Manali. But the house ain't
ordinary house and the nights that follow is anything but normal. Because
strange noises and voices becomes the norm, and then everything happens. Cars run on its own, doors shut on its own, and in between all this-
Sanjana gets sexually molested. Well, not on her own, but yes...everyone else seem to think so right from her friend Pooja
(Grusha Kapoor) to
the weird "i'm a doctor, i'm a psychiatrist too" specialist (Shahbaaz
Khan).
Soon the pervert ghost gets more bolder, rapes Sanjana a couple
more times, even attempts to kill her off before he finally takes away
the youngest of the two daughters. At this point, we call in the ghostbuster
(Mukesh Tiwari) who tries his
hand at getting rid of the aatma.
The film leaves a lot of things unanswered. So the who the hell is this
aatma and why is he such a pervert. Why does he narrow his stunts on Sanjana's character. And then why was all the step-father sexual abuse
angle brought into the story. To confuse the audience into thinking that
Sanjana's character could be the one that is disturbed in the real world?
HAWA is certainly a horror for most parts - a thorough horror to sit
through. And even if they fail to drive away the aatma, they certainly
have found a novel way to drive away the audiences.
Without a doubt the film is a ripoff from the early 80 horror flick ENTITY. But Guddu Dhanoa will bring in some changes..and why not,...he
starts off the movie being heavily inspired by Shyamalan's SIGNS (the dog
factor) and then towards the end he does a POLTERGEIST to do the
kidnapping of the kid who by the way was napping. Get it -
kid-napping?! Forget it, by jokes are getting as bad as the film.
Even Tabu was a big disappointment. Agreed in certain scenes, she does
a great job but then again, whose performance will not fall when you have to mouth such inane
dialogues like the one in this film. Shahbaaz Khan has one horrible
dialogue after the other.
Ok,
the film does have a few plus factors. Some of the special effects
used are quite good and wasn't all that cheesy. The camerawork and the
lighting does manage to create the spooky ambience required. And to
Guddu Dhano's credit, the rape sequences have been executed well and
definitely not in bad taste. And above all, no songs at all to spoil
the pace. Only some decent background score Surender Sodhi.But inspite
of all those things working well, the subject just fails to weave the
magic. You hardly feel for the heroine's character and you just aren't
excited to even find out who is behind all that sexual assault.
Probably that disinterest unhooks you out of the film right from the
word 'go'.
The
film does starts of decently well but the further we proceed, the more
downhill things get. So the only word of caution I can put in is that
this 'Hawa' is hardly worth a breath. Its indigestible and more truly,
all gas!
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