Bhoot - Part One: The Haunted Ship
There were actually less ghosts being hands-y in the movie than the poster suggested.
Bhoot is your typical Hidustani horror movie in the sense that, although it doesn't employ the typical Hindustani tactics of group dances and singalongs, the camera angles, story line and acting are all quite similar to one another. Honestly, if you've seen one, you've seen them all. BUT. The twist for Bhoot - Part One: The Haunted Ship was quite satisfactory... if only they did it right.
The story starts out with a shot of a cargo ship on the open water. The captain and crew are celebrating a birthday party for the captain's daughter. Suddenly, during the celebration, the daughter is lured away by the sound of a finger snap akin to West Side Story. As the little girl follows it, something supernatural occurs and the little girl is never to be seen again.
"C'mere kid, so I can punch ya"
The opening scene plays out like a cheap cross between Ghost Ship (2002) and The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997). One takes place on a ship and the other has a little girl led astray by curiosity and then gets violently hurt in the process. Personally, it had no sense of originality and the finger snapping was just plain stupid.
"What do you know about the Proletariat, you goddamn Gopnik"
The movie then actually begins and focuses on a shipping officer named Prithvi, played by Vicky Kaushal, who is discovered to be a schizophrenic with a sad past which the director and writer decide to use as fuel for several of the movie's irrelevant plot lines.
Prithvi is tasked with managing the disposal of an old ship that washed ashore one day. Where it came from or why, no one knows thus adding to the mystery of the ship and the mystery of Mumbai's clean beaches seen in the movie.
As Prithvi boards the ship, dubbed "Sea Bird", he starts to encounter various supernatural incidences. But a job's a job... is a job, so he has to complete his task or end up on the fast track towards Mumbai's unemployment line. As the movie progresses, Prithvi is haunted by the memories of his wife and daughter, the supernatural entity that haunts him and his annoyingly work-retentive friend and colleague Riaz, played by Akash Dhar.
"If we ignore the main plotline, we can grab a vada pav before the stall closes"
All in all the movie is enjoyable with the jump scares and main storyline. The only let down was the CGI for the main main and supporting supernatural entities - yes, there are two and both were a let down. If they employed make up effects, it would have been better, but Hidustani horror movies usually manage to fuck things up one way or another. I do enjoy some Hidustani horror, but they've got a long way to go before keeping things consistent. If it's not the story line that messes the movie up, it's the acting. If it's not the acting, it's the creature design.
However, the supernatural plot twist at the end was refreshing, but to call this a great movie isn't really fair to great horror movies out there. At the end of the day, I give this a two ghost emoji out of five.
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Below is the scare factor graph for Bhoot - Part One: The Haunted Ship.
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