Ragini MMS

Cast: Kainaz Motivala, Raj Kumar Yadav

Director: Pavan Kripalani

The horror genre in Hindi cinema still hasn't found its right footing nor has it managed to carve a niche in the minds of the audience. Time and again we've had clichéd cake-faced, long nailed, shabby haired spirits lurking meaninglessly around haunted houses grudgingly seeking revenge of something gone wrong with them in the past. In such times comes Ekta Kapoor's scary date movie Ragini MMS. Now whether it manages to bring some chill or not let's find out. Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) takes to a weekend getaway with her boyfriend Uday (Rajkumar Yadav) to a bleak dilapidated bungalow amidst a forest. Ragini is in love with Uday but Uday has different plans altogether. He devices this trip and bugs the entire bungalow with cameras in order to make a sex tape. However, his plans get foiled by an impending terror which looms large on them. What happens to the couple next is what forms the rest of the story.

Quite like many other horror flicks, Ragini MMS too has a long haired, cake-faced spirit avenging her and haunting the house. It is also a very clear adaptation of Hollywood hit Paranormal Activity. However, where it differs from the rest of the others in the horror genre league is it narrative and treatment. Very rarely do Indian horror films manage to scare you. But this one surely brings a chill down your spine and makes you tuck your face under your hands. The grab footage feel that's been a rage in Hollywood horror flicks gives Ragini MMS a very realistic and believable feel making it all the more petrifying. Director Pavan Kriplani doesn't rush into things by having the ghost in your face time and again. A common error committed by many filmmakers. Pawan instead instills terror among the viewers very subtly using all the scary elements of a horror film like light effects, sounds, creaks, moans etc. He also plays a smart move by fusing sex in between timely paranormal activities keeping you glued to your seats. What doesn't work in the film's favour is its length. The initial 20 minutes could have been snipped off if the filmmaker wanted a prolonged shot of Ragini's encounter with the evil.

On the acting front Kainaz is perfect in her part of a petite love-sick girl and Rajkumar Yadav is brilliant as a cheap, despicable boyfriend. Those in the know may recall, 2004 was a particular poor year at Hindi movies. A skin flick called Murder was supposedly the year’s biggest hit. One picture that I suspect more people watched on their computers or phones than at the cinemas was an MMS clip starring two high school kids. It was an obscene porn video shot on a cellphone camera, set in a chemistry lab. The location was unwittingly sponsored by my alma mater, Delhi Public School, RK Puram. The innocent female star of that circulated MMS was driven to disappear after the episode.

As the character based on her in Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D puts it, "Half the country downloaded that clip. And they called me the slut!" That’s the irony around voyeurism. It’s still a basic instinct. It unites losers across. And hell, there’re millions of them worldwide. You’re not surprised they’ve inspired this film. The busty girl’s in a white tank top; denim shorts for hot pants. Her supposed boyfriend is a small built, uncouth, abusive sort of fellow from the North, a thoku master (sex bunny),” as he calls himself. She takes his crap lying down. He packs in loads of condoms, plans a weekend of non stop sex that, unknown to her, he intends to film and post on the Internet. The promised lovemaking will be real, you’re told. You wait. Foreplay comes first. Fear’s secondary. The bungalow the girl and the boy are in is inside a dark, deep jungle. Another couple, friends of theirs, quite easily find this desolate den to spoil the sex tape plans, though only briefly. These are strange kind of young people who down Kingfishers from a big bottle, dance berserk to Bappi Lahiri’s sentimental ditty, You're my chicken fry. You're my fish fry. (I love that song too just can’t imagine someone moving to it seriously).

The house, it turns out, has a strange presence lurking around. The couple realises this quite early on. Yet they don’t leave. There’s a dead woman whose ghost haunts this bungalow. This is also a bit of a Bigg Boss house, with cameras fitted all over, and a console that monitors every move. It starts out quite well. The premise and screenplay (neatly outlined) is captivating all right. Spycams allow salacious viewers unfettered access to close-ups of ladies’ bums. Along with it, what the director evidently lacks is Ram Gopal Varma’s strong, sudden cues to the Bhoot (2003) that is at once in and not in the room: the clever sense of horror, as it were. Which is obviously just an intense trick. Where tension is rationed out in measured portions. Here, you already know the whole story. Suspense is rarely withheld. The boy never quite gives up on his goofiness. You can never take him seriously. The girl, kinkily handcuffed to the bed, hardly exudes any genuine, gobsmacking, gut-wrenching fright. The participating audience’s fear eventually fizzles out towards the end.

This is a digital film. Much on the lines of The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranomal Activity (2007) movies that instantly taught us how little it costs (apparently about $25,000 and $11,000) to satisfy that many millions across the world. The producer’s Ekta Kapoor. She was once known for afternoon television soaps called Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi or Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki. She should now be forever known for not just making, but astonishingly marketing, the Dibakar Bannerjee digital profundity Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010).

The leading couple in the film of course, doesn’t get to sleep with each other. The producer’s clearly looking out for a sleeper hit. Good for her. It’s not a bad effort unfortunately, it remains just that. If you are looking for a movie that takes a lot from real life and adds the imagination to come up with a blood chilling horror movie is the much awaited Ragini MMS. Debutant director Pawan Kripalani has done a brilliant job of blending horror, sex and real life. New comers Raj Kumar Yadav and Kainaz Motivala have convincingly portrayed their characters. Kainaz is stunning and is sure to ignite million hearts. Ekta Kapoor has produced the movie and it has a budget of approximately one crore rupees. The movie is predicted to be the shoe string wonder of this year. Hype and interest around the movie is all set to make it the biggest blockbuster of 2011.

The story revolves around the young couple Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) and her beau Udayan (Raj Kumar Yadav). They plan to spend a day in a bungalow, away from the city. The duo chooses the deserted place to indulge in sex. Ragini is unaware of the ulterior motives of Udayan who plans to record a sex tape of themselves and to sell it off for a good amount. However, thing turn sinister as the couple discovers the presence of a third person along with them. As the sun sets on the horizon they realize that the other presence in the house is paranormal and what follows is complete mayhem. If a couple of kissing sequences coupled with a good looking girl strutting around in shorts excites the voyeur in you, then 'Ragini MMS' may just fit the bill. However if you are hunting for some 'real stuff' that a MMS is typically made of along with some shockingly scary moments then well, 'Ragini MMS' doesn't quite go the whole hog.

For a young couple, a run down bungalow in a Godforsaken place is a weekend hangout for an extended scene of 'action'. While for the girl (Kainaz Motivala) it is sheer love (with a dose of lust), for the boy (Raj Kumar Yadav), it is neither love nor lust but sheer business as he intends to cut a video of his act and sell it in the porn market. However weird things start happening to them with a spirit lurking in the background that results in terrifying times for the couple. Viraan jungle, ek tooti haveli aur usme ek bhatakti aatma the ingredients are the kind that are pretty much seeing an expiry date even on television. In such a scenario that one factor that works most for 'Ragini MMS' is technology. Not just it intrigues the audience due to its different texture; it also makes for an interesting movie watching experience as over 80% of the film is shot with static cameras. So instead, one gets to see standard shots that are taken by half a dozen cameras placed in different parts of the bungalow.

This innovation extends to the scenes, dialogues and acts as well since there isn't anything filmy about the entire affair. Both Kainaz as well as Raj Kumar are plain natural and completely uninhibited which makes one truly feel that they are not acting and merely happening to be in front of a camera that is capturing them in their moments. Moreover, due to this being a 'real affair', most of Raj Kumar's dialogues are expletives filled with no beeps whatsoever. Yes, there are a few moments of genuine 'edge of the seat drama', especially the ones when the spirit starts attacking Raj Kumar and scares the daylight out of him. However the scare and the haunt factor doesn't quite go the whole hog. Also, it only starts becoming routine with entire chain of events leading to Kainaz's attempt at escaping becoming repetitive.

While one is still fine with letting go off the motive behind all the killings (since Ragini MMS was never meant to be a structured story and was always supposed to tell a tale as captured on camera), the climax seems abrupt and doesn't make any explanations either. If one goes by what unfolds on screen, the film is very high on concept, technology as well as execution. However if only the written material would have been more convincing with the culmination being batter, 'Ragini MMS' may just have managed to become Bollywood's own 'Paranormal Activity'. As it turns out, the film is a reasonably engaging affair. However as the end credits start rolling, one does tend to exclaim that it could have been a lot better. When Dibakar Banerjee took a previously done concept to make "Love Sex Aur Dhokha" (LSD), he not only created cinematic poetry but its commercial success made its studio greedy enough to replicate the formula. Sadly, what the studio did not realize is that unlike science, in cinema, formulas can not always be replicated. Proof "Ragini MMS", a clone between LSD, Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity.

Uday (Raj Kumar) takes Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) to a secluded house rigged with cameras. He intends to shoot a sex video. What he does not know is that the house is haunted. The sexy twosome, soon turn into a murderous threesome. There are too many things wrong with the film the jump cuts are often jarring, there are no subplots, it abounds in all cliches of the horror genre, though the performance of the lead pair is convincing, the others are bad, the ghost may not be wearing a white bed sheet and a candle, but her hazy, ugly witch avatar has been done to death before, the ghost is seen so much that she stops being frightening and the audio during the horror scenes is so loud that instead of the scene, it's the sound that scares etc.

"Ragini MMS" does not seem to be the work of one or a few creative soul, rather it looks like the handiwork of many heads trying to break creativity together that end up breaking apart the film instead.

One of the most key elements of a horror film is silence. The simplest trick in the horror filmmakers manual is to punctuate the film with lots of silent moments raising a false alarm in the minds of the viewer and striking horror when least expected. There is so much loud background noise put into the film that any sense of nuances is completely lost. The lack of a credible back story or subplots ensures that you don't empathize with your butchered couple. Raj Kumar who almost essays the same videotaping voyeur's role he played in LSD, is underutilized and though a feeble attempt is made at the end to make you empathize with him, it's too late. Also the concept of horror in the film is of western origin that of pure evil. The Japanese version of horror, which is gaining currency in Hollywood after dozens of their horror films have been remade, is that of empathy for the ghost as well where the film also become a mystery, besides being a dumb slasher movie.

Also for horror films, besides a notable exception in Paranormal Activity, linear plots don't work. The unexpected twists in the story do. Ekta Kapoor, who after landmark films like LSD and "Shor In The City", has the chance to become the patron saint of creative directors, needs to remember that a director and his team is hired for their creative vision. She needs to learn to trust them for that.Ekta Kapoor's sex-horror film Ragini MMS has opened to a huge critical reception. The film that look terrifyingly real would be able to connect with the viewers as it amalgamates components of horror, paranormal and sex seamlessly, say critics.

Says Taran Adarsh, Bollywood Hungama, Like Love Sex aur Dhokha, Ragini MMS has been shot as if in real time, in an unconventional way. The film is voyeuristic in nature. It's like watching the footage on a handycam and getting those thrills. But, of course, not all of Ragini MMS is sex and scandal. There's a 'third person' watching the act as well, plus there's a story behind this haunted mansion. However, it's terrifying enough to make you jump on your seat. Let me call it a creepy, spine-chilling date movie!" The film is not flawless though. Says Rediff, "The imperfections of the film lie in the overpowering background tone, which tries to over dramatize the horror. It reflects fluctuating buoyancy on part of the makers, as if the white-lady has a complex of not being able to solely evoke fear. Also, conspicuous is the need for a close-fitting editing."

But the performances make up for the lapses. Says Nikhat Kazmi, The Times of India, "The horror does work in places, although the persistent dim light and the grainy video effect tend to get a bit irksome. But the realistic performances by the lead pair more than make up for the lapses." Some feel that the movie would connect with "those young enough to be scared by the chills and desperate enough to find the sex titillating."

Says, Kaveree Bamzai, India Today, "Surely the film will have an audience among those young enough to be scared by the chills and desperate enough to find the sex titillating. But I guess I just wasn't scared enough. Maybe I've just been watching too many Ram Gopal Varma movies that have been worse. Far worse. And young Raj Kumar, you really have to stop meeting us like this. Try a movie without a sex scene that is being recorded on camera next time.