Movie: Durgamati

Director: G Ashok

Star cast: Arshad Warsi, Bhumi Pednekar, Mahie Gill, Jisshu Sengupta, Karan Kapadia, Anant Mahadevan

Rating: Half star

Jasmine Singh

What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

This is what happened here.

After surviving the outrightly shoddy, comedy-horror mashup Laxmmi, Bollywood decided to put our limits to test with yet another scary sans comedy film Durgmati.

And, this one probably was made to scare the life out of Coronavirus!

Director Ashok G had complete faith in his 2018 Tamil- Telugu bilingual Bhaagamathie.

With this faith he decided to give the original film a Bollywood twist, calling it Durgamati.

And whosoever said what’s in a name, come let’s debate on the transition from Bhaagamathie to Durgamti, from real horror to an irrelevant one.

The film is a neat-looking, technically evolved copy of Ramsay Brothers horror films.

Shadows looming at the back of the room, scary twist of the head, flicking of hair, is nothing but outright passé.

Durgamati is placed with all the Ramsay elements, it even has an ‘old bhootiya haveli’ to top it all.

The story of the film is as convincing as the picturisation, dialogues and even acting. For one, we can believe in the story of Avni (Played by Vidya Balan) in Bhool Bhulaiya, but the story of an old princess Durgamati betrayed in love coming back for revenge, no, never.

Although while we prayed to get through this ordeal, the director of the film decided to bring in some ‘Hollywoodish’ touch.

They tried to copy a boot camp police investigation scene from the popular web-series Money Heist!

And what a fall flat on their face it was.

The dialogues in the film are archaic and outright deplorable.

The radar shifts now to the actors, and talking about acting, Bhumi Pednekar plays Durgamati in Durgamati.

Her acting lacks that ghost like element. It seems she is just having fun, and we can understand lockdown hasn’t left actors with many choices. You can also see Karan Kapadia in this film, and some of you might find time to Google about his lineage!

Mahie Gill tries too hard to bring in some CBI element and seriousness in the plot, which she fails miserably at.

And here comes the ‘man of the moment’, Arshad Warsi who plays the bad man in Durgamati.

Sounding unconvincing, Arshad is still stuck in the ‘oo-mai Golmaal’ era!

Jisshu Sengupta’s small role is hardly noticeable.

And then there's Tanya Abrol of Chak De India, a character that was created under some kind of hallucination.

The world is already reeling under the sadness spread by Corona, we can definitely do without this Bollywood scary act called Durgamati.