'Ragini MMS' is wannabe, and gimmicky

Film: Ragini MMS (A)
Director: Pawan Kripalani
Cast: Raj Kumar Yadav, Kainaz Motiwala
Rating: **

Ragini MMS was probably conceptualised during the success party of Love Sex Aur Dhoka. "LSD ke second story ko remake karte hai, aur usme Paranormal Activity daal dete hain. Love, sex, dhoka aur horror."

Ragini MMS may have been marketed as this cool, new-age Indian horror film that caters to the youth — making it a sort of Luv Ka The End-meets-Haunted 3D, horrifically — but ends up being a mishmash of an urban, intelligent horror film it intends to be and the typical misunderstood-ghost-looking-for-revenge tale it doesn’t even end up being.

Are there enough chills? A few, maybe. An appropriately planned out production design — every room in the haunted house gives you a spooky feeling — and some good camerawork ensure the film has some hair-raising moments, two or three of which will even have your hearts in your mouths.

But the intermittent scary moments apart, Ragini MMS suffers from an almost dry first half, which may have been intentional because anticipation as a tool can be effective in horror. But while the anticipation just gets to you after a point, the post-interval portion fails to live up to the buildup, boring you, even making you laugh unintentionally at places.

Uday Jhala, played by Rajkumar Yadav, takes his girlfriend Ragini (Kainaz Motiwala) to a house in faraway Dahanu for a weekend of love and sex. The dhoka is in the form of cameras installed in every part of the house by a guy called Panditji, whom Uday is working with, to shoot a sex video of the two.

Yadav was earlier seen in Love Sex Aur Dhoka, where he played a similar role of a guy videotaping a ‘session’ with his girlfriend (some serious typecasting this!), and acts with a confidence that belies the fact that he’s only two films old. Motivala fits well in the role of the innocent, beautiful teenager.

But as the promos have suggested, the two don’t know that there’s a threesome waiting for them. This ‘horror’ element in the story is a ghost, a chudail rather, who, according to legend, had killed her entire family. This woman is a Maharashtrian and regularly breaks into chudail-talk like "Mee chetkin nahi" (subtitled in Hindi as ‘Main chudail nahi’).

Raj Thackeray would be proud of Ragini MMS. The Marathi-speaking ghost seems to have been trying desperately to communicate with Ragini, telling her that she was "NOT a chudail and DID NOT kill her family", but Ragini kept replying in Hindi: "Mujhe ghar jaane do." Clearly, the miscommunication seemed to have infuriated the ghost, leading to the ghastly events.

Watch Ragini MMS only if you dig cheap thrills. But don’t worry about losing sleep thereafter.