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Watch the exclusive movie review of 'Aatma' starring Bipasha Basu & Nawazuddin Siddiqui Another Friday and another spook fest by Bipasha Basu who in this horror/thriller flick is scared... very scared that her dead husband's aatma will take her child, Nia (Doyel Dhawan), away. Bipasha's, Maya, has had a very traumatized married life with Abhay (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) and after his death all she wants to do is start her life afresh... but no, siree, no... there is no rest for her and definitely not for the audience as her dead hubby's aatma will not let her (or us) rest in peace as he comes back to haunt her from the dead with the sole agenda of taking his six year old daughter to the dark side with him. In the course of the aatma haunting and playing psycho games with Maya, Nia starts chatting with him and bhayanak incidents start happening spoiling all the fun for mama Maya and beti Nia.... A question you might well ask; is Aatma a horror film or a psychological thriller? Well, it doesn't seem to fit into any of the two genres, but nevertheless, let me tell you, good people, what the film has to offer. What you are treated to in Aatma is nothing but a regular part of the horror movie template. There's the clockwork appearance and disappearance of Abhay, accompanied by the evil laugh, Nia bouncing off the walls, a priest performing rituals to ward off evil spirits, Maya getting spooked, Abhay appearing on Maya's computer screen, Nia getting possessed, an eerie old woman crackling "woh aa gaya hai", the protagonists' loved ones getting bumped off, the prerequisite psychiatrist, the good cop et al. Things that we have seen before set to music that we have heard before. The plot seems to be scarily exciting, a dead father coming back to take away his beloved daughter and the film's blue tinted, gloomy look works for it. Additionally, it has fine actors like Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Darshan Jariwala, Shernaz Patel besides horror movie veteran Bipasha Basu and the scary looking Doyel Dhawan to boast of. And therein lays the film's opportunity - to play on the audience's mind by turning around an established perception instead of relying on visual gimmickry. Aatma gets there to an extent but fails and somehow ends up doing exactly that... giving you your mundane ordinary horror flick with no thrills or chills. Director Suparn Verma has apparently planned a trilogy to Aatma and is all set to go on the floor with part 2 but perhaps he should try another genre for his next. Nawaz looks too affable as papa ghost to be in a horror movie but being the fine actor he is, he does his best. Bipasha is good in the climax sequence but unfortunately by the time she seems to have given up playing herself in the first half of the movie you have given up on her as an actor who gets into the skin of her character. She needs to work on being more maternal if she is going to take on mommy roles but pulls off looking horrified with the panache of a pro. Doyel Dhawan looks like she is stoned; Shernaz Patel is adequate as is Darshan Jariwala. The film should do well because it is gift wrapped slickly. -- Published on March 22, 2013
