A Flat

Had seen this movie on DVD which was lying at my friends house.

Didnt like it al all 2/10

The film might not be that good but the music is worth appreciating. Dil Kashi by Sonu Nigam and Meetha sa by KK are definitely two very sweet, heartbreaking romantic songs with great background music too.

Having been grossly mislead into seeing this film due to its rating, I was expecting a good watch.

However from the initial opening of a woman committing suicide by jumping from the top of a building, I quickly flashed back to the scene in The Grudge where Peter (Bill Pullman) takes his own life in a similar fashion.

As the opening credits appear in the film you see the trademark long black hairs ditto The Grudge opening credits. At this point I was thinking to myself that I had made a BIG mistake.

This film also borrows from 1408(2007) where Mike Enslin (John Cusack) is trapped inside a haunted room and unable to escape it. In this film the character played by Jimmy Shergill is also unable to leave his flat as he is trapped by a ghost who haunts it.

Also the ghost is also copied (stolen is a better word) exactly from The Grudge.

Plot of film: Rahul (Jimmy Shergill) arrives from U.S. to make amends with his love, Preeti (Kaveri Jha) in India. He buys a flat from his long time friend.

His dad (Sachin Khedekar), dies under mysterious circumstances when he visits the flat, followed by the baffling disappearance of Preeti. And soon Rahul finds himself trapped in his own flat, completely cut off from the world. The only companion he has is a ghost.

The ghost is of a woman who had been cheated into false marriage, unknowing that the man she was about to marry had already been married. And then when she got pregnant, her husband brought in a doctor that specialized in illegal abortions. During the abortion she dies, and her husband hides her body within a wall in the flat and then plastering it up with cement so no one would notice when he sold the flat.

Now this ghost wants revenge at any cost. In order to lure her husband, she uses Rahul as her tool.

Bottom line: if after reading the plot you STILL want to SEE this film, go right ahead! The only horror films that are halfway decent and at least worth the money spent on it are those directed by Vikram Bhatt. Shaapit and 1920 are good examples of watchable horror films.

Email me Vivekmaru45@yahoo.com for more movie recommendations. Have a nice day :)

It's true that Horror as a genre has indeed got its own audience and success ratio in Bollywood. But that does not give us the liberty or license to keep on giving mediocre and repetitive kind of movies in the name of HORROR. In fact, films such as A FLAT may become responsible for killing the excitement and fun involved in this particular genre which can still bring in good number of people in the theater. Hence as stated above, this week we have a completely wash-out venture offered to the lovers of Horror films which quite funnily not even once scares you in its less than 2 hours of duration. In other words, almost everything in A FLAT is simply monotonous and uninteresting which never rises above than what you have already seen in all those famous successful scary films released in the past.

Based on the most over-used formula of a haunted flat having a mysterious story to tell, A FLAT actually reveals its entire secret in its title itself. And that only takes away all the fun of watching it since you already know where the secret lies in the script. Moreover the uninspiring angle of bringing an innocent village girl to the town and then unwillingly killing her further reduces your interest in the film as the plot has earlier been used uncountable times in Hindi movies in the past.

With performers not looking like the character they are playing, A FLAT also becomes a victim of a not so convincing casting. For instance, Sachin Khedekar's sequence of losing his character at that age is not well conceived or written, both Hazel and Naseer Abdullah never look or speak like village residents, Sanjay Suri doesn't give you the feeling of a wicked character, there is no chemistry between the love pair of Jimmy-Kaveri and Jimmy Shergill really looks like doing it as a burden assignment in most of his scenes.

In addition to this, A FLAT heavily relies on the same old shaky camera tricks played along with some loud sound effects to scare you out which don't work at all. In absence of any good music or exceptional cinematography it never really gives you any moment to enjoy or feel engrossed.

So after watching it you only have one question in mind that if this was the debut attempt of the director Hemant Madhukar, then why did he chose such kind of jaded subject and treatment which simply had no potential of giving him even an average earner. With a plot reminding you of the FLAT in BHOOT (2003), the hairy spirit of THE RING (2002) and the basic storyline of KUDRAT (1981), he really should have thought of something else to prove himself.