phoonk

Phoonk resorts to the standard horror film template that Ram Gopal Varma had adopted in his earlier films like Bhoot and Raat . A human is possessed by spirit. The lead protagonist doesn’t believe in supernatural. He checks up with a psychiatrist who follows a scientific approach and passes off the haunted hangovers as some dissociative personality disorder. But the elderly deem it as eerie. After much debate over science and superstition, an exorcist is summoned who liberates the possessed from the evil forces.

Phoonk follows an exactly identical outline and ends up being a regurgitated version of Bhoot (set in a Vaastu Shastra verandah) with minor modifications. Ram Gopal Varma perhaps attempts to give a new discourse to the narrative by having a child possessed here. Little does he realize that this juvenile dimension has already been exploited several times since The Omen (1976) to Aruna Raje’s Gehrayee (1980) where a teenaged Padmini Kolhapuri was possessed. The disbelieving protagonist is her father. Meanwhile a ‘black magic’ label is given to the story to renew the motivation of the horror. But the film, by no means, analyzes the intricacies or aftermath of the black magic practice in India. Rather the resolution of the sorcery is dramatically fabricated to formulate a filmi climax.

Phoonk routes for the conventional gimmicks to induce fear by opting for creepy background score, hovering camera movements and shocking sound effects. But these trifling technicalities do no account for an honorable horrifying feel, because the outcome of the sound effects is merely a natural reflex action to stimulus and not fervent fear. Beyond these technical mechanics, the legend in itself doesn’t have the potency to evoke much horror.