Vikram Bhatt wants you to believe too many impossibilities
“If you love me, you can be stupid for me” says actress Bipasha Basu to director Emraan Hasmi. Bipasha’s career is on its way down and she is insanely jealous of actress Esha Gupta, who has overtaken her in just two years. Bipasha loses her seemingly unshakeable faith in god when Esha Gupta wins 2012 best actress award, and turns to a dark force to get her lost glory back.
This dark force is an aatma (a pret-aatma, actually) who, by his own admission, is somewhere between the worlds of life and death. This evil being has turned away from god, and in his residential area that comprises of a few chawls, small temples are covered with a cloth just because he hates god. He lives in a pool of sewage water that has empty mineral-water bottles floating about. Yeah, that’s where Bipasha goes to meet him.
This creature (let’s call him Mr Bhoot, because I don’t remember his name) looks like a fresh corpse, and can turn into a disgusting model of rotting flesh with maggots all over him whenever he wants to spook someone. Mr Bhoot gives Bipasha a bottle of water that Esha Gupta must drink in order to be trapped under his spell.
Bipasha has sex with Emraan Hashmi and it makes for a highly unappealing scene as she convinces him to cast Esha Gupta in his next movie and somehow make her drink that water. He does it, of course, and so the black magic begins.
The television set switches on and off just like that; Esha Gupta hears strange voices; her maid dies a horrible death – and that is one great horror scene. Other things happen as well: a Hindu psychic takes Esha Gupta to a Christian cemetery to perform a ritual. He goes to the world of spirits to get her soul back, and ends up decapitated. Too bad he’s Hindu, or he could’ve been buried right there. Emraan Hashmi and Esha Gupta have sex immediately after that guy’s death, and that’s pretty cool.
There are too many other such scenes: a clown from Esha’s childhood visits the studio to scare her, cockroaches make Esha Gupta take her clothes off and dash around naked in a party, and she ends up in the hospital after a nervous breakdown.
Do you get what’s happening? It’s not scary, really. First of all, you can’t believe the story, because you’ve seen Bipasha Basu do many other things. Secondly, you can’t get into the story, because Bipasha Basu is not a very convincing actor.
Emraan Hashmi is now in love with Esha Gupta, and Bipasha wants her dead. To get what she wants now, she has to have sex with Mr Bhoot in his decomposed avatar. Bhoot then goes to the hospital, and it is up to Emraan Hashmi to save Esha Gupta.
Allow me to ruin it – Emraan had buried an idol of Ganpati, when he could have immersed it a week from now. He exhumes it when he realizes he needs god’s help. While Emraan is bashing the crap out of Bhoot, a mouse gnaws at a rope that covers a small temple and breaks it to unveil a Ganesh statue. And Emraan Hashmi gets the strength to kill the ghost. All this just before Ganesh Chaturthi/Ganpati Visarjan.
A good thing about Raaz 3 is that it doesn’t have too many songs. Another good thing about Raaz 3 is that Emraan Hashmi can act sincerely. The best thing about Raaz 3 is that Esha Gupta looks hot. That’s it, and apart from the possessed-maid-killing-herself scene, there’s nothing in Raaz 3 worth watching even once.
And I know what that transparent liquid is, because only LSD in such strong doses could’ve made Esha Gupta hallucinate all those things and take her clothes off at an event. Not jadu-tona, not black magic, not bhoot-pret attacks – the raaz is that she’s enduring a bad acid trip.
RATING: 2/5
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