Review: Phoonk

Standard Ram Gopal Varma horror dish, this. Better spend the ticket money on gaping at fried fish. Or better still, even eat it with a phoonk and knife, suggests Khalid Mohamed.

Phoonk
Cast: Sudeep, Ahsaas Chanana, Crow, Dog, Cat, Owl, Nimboos, Bones
Direction: Ram Gopal Varma
Rating: **

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Owl scowls. Meow, a cutie pie black cat sits by a roadside. A maid-servant’s eyes become rounder than water melons. Granny nods, nods, nods (in different degrees). Smiley ball smiles (naturally). Chauffeur guzzles booze and looks through a window like Ranjeet the Rasputin would in the 1960s. And dear child Ahsaas suddenly decamps to gape at a crow which doesn’t even caw in a tribute to the silent movies. Perhaps.

That’s Ram Gopal Varma’s Phoonk which is essentially about Baby Ahsaas developing a male voice like Sonu Nigaam’s and behaving like Linda Blair from The Exorcist. Chill, guys, she doesn’t barf out dehydrated pea-soup like Blair did. Our Linda just lies in a bed, driving her parents (Sudeep-Amruta Khanvilkar) crazy-hazy. That means Lilette Dubey, like Victor Bannerjee in Bhoot, fetches up as a psychologist to say something about “psycho dissassociative disorder.” So much medical research, it’s touching.

Don’t be taken in by Psycholette though. It’s actually voodoo being practised by a portly nerd and his cackle-cackle wife. Enter an Exorcist, with eyes hitting the ceiling, who does a number on Linda, Ahsaas, whoever. And lo, you want to rush out and gape at a crow. Real-life ones even caw caw.