Review: Click draws more laughs than screams

Review: Click draws more laughs than screams

Many of our filmmakers, quite unfairly, are certain the Indian audience isn?t ready for real horror - only embarrassingly bland thrills that pass off for scares. In Click, the scare quotient dips to a new low, matched only by Ramsay?s productions that were unintentionally comic.

When your audience is giggling through the film (not the nervous laugh as you await a fright), you know there?s trouble. You have a photographer Avi (Shreyas Talpade) and his model girlfriend Sonia (Sada). Strange things happen after an accident (late-night, on a lonely stretch) when their car rams into a girl. The couple panics and leaves.

From then on, all of Avi?s photos carry a mysterious white fog. They approach a psychic-writer for help (Chunky Pandey). Meanwhile, the usual stuff happens: doors slam shut, lights flicker; heck, even the chalk-coloured lady ghost (Sneha Ullal) makes an appearance, horizontally stuck across the window of a moving car.

In our films, apart from the story, even the ghosts are prone to beating about the bush. If it?s revenge they?re looking for, they?ll first kill time blowing out candles and shaking furniture.

At least, in Ram Gopal Varma and Vikram Bhatt?s scare-fests, you?re at the edge of your seat a couple of times. Here there?s no such moment. Predictable to the core, and copied from the 2008 English movie Shutter (a remake of an earlier Thai film), the story only plummets further into the bizarre.

As narcissistic as the spirit is, she chooses to be invisible most of the time, appearing only in photographs. So whenever the couple wants to see her, they pick up a Polaroid camera and click to locate the spirit.

The performances are ok. Shreyas Talpade, always a strong performer, is dependably competent. Sada, seen in films like Love Khichdi, is fairly good. Sneha Ullal is unimpressive both in ghost and human form.

Technically, the film is below par. The camerawork doesn?t aid in spooking you, and the music is jarring, dubbing old-school.

So why was this film made? Do the makers really expect the audience to be happy with a simplistic horror film that couldn?t scare a child? Even mindless slasher flicks have some weight in the story and a few suspenseful moments that have your eyes glued to the screen.

Sangeeth Sivan, who earlier directed Apna Sapna Money Money and Kya Kool Hai Hum, doesn?t quite cut it in the horror genre.

Towards the end, a character says, ?Finally, it?s getting over!? mirroring the viewer?s sentiments. Verdict: wouldn?t you rather sample the original?

1.5 stars