The latest Hindi film to be released on Amazon Prime Video, on October 29, 2021 to be exact, is titled dybbuk Directed by Jay K who also directed the original Malayalam film ezra (2017) and started filming this Hindi remake in 2019 and due to the pandemic, was unable to plan a theatrical release, sold the rights to Amazon and released as an Amazon Original Movie. It is a horror movie with some suspenseful elements and an interesting plot. Perhaps for photographic reasons, the filming took place in Mauritius, apart from a small scene in Mumbai. The protagonists are Emraan Hashmi and Nikita Dutta. The movie has all the elements of a horror movie, such as an overly loud background score, broken jump scares, moving figures behind your back, an ugly face in the mirror or closet, and quite a few scary scenes that you inadvertently they become humorous. . However, the film fares a bit better than the traditional Ramsay Brothers type or Vikram Bhatt horror type thanks to its interesting plot involving a Jewish community in Mauritius and their occult folklore, faith and practices.
The film opens with the death of a Jewish dignitary whose house was filled with antique pieces, and then with the murder of an antique shop attendant while being drawn to a mysterious-looking box that was obtained from the dignitary’s house. When he opens the box, there is some kind of poltergeist shaking going on all over the inside of the locked shop and he is supposedly thrown against the walls and killed. Police launched investigations but the process came to an abrupt halt when attention turned to the lead couple, who had to move suitcases and luggage from Mumbai to Mauritius as the husband was transferred to run a delicate nuclear waste factory there for two years. The company gave them a big bungalow. The bored wife who was thinking of going into the interior design of the bungalow visited the same antique store and was fascinated by the antique box. She brings it home, opens it, and things start to happen. As usual in all supernatural movies, the husband refuses to believe until he begins to experience the strange occurrences himself.
The plot is interesting because, at least for me personally, I never remember a Jewish community being the focus of a Hindi film other than listening to dialogue in Hebrew or Yiddish, thankfully with subtitles, and learning about their folklore. The word ‘dybbuk’ in Hebrew or Yiddish means devil or evil spirit, and the Jews had an occult practice of imprisoning such spirits in boxes for various reasons and purposes. That the old box had something wrong inside it was obvious from the start, so the suspenseful element was missing. However, the plot still had a lot to build an atmosphere of fear, suspense and tension.
The script of the film spoiled the potential even though the director had first hand experience of creating a tense atmosphere in the original Malayalam film which he directed himself. It is unknown if he had to compromise with the demands for a Hindi film formula in addition to changing the sets to Picturesque Mauritius. The making of the film looks like a computer put together, as if all the parts, i.e. the scenes, were created separately and then put together, thus the natural flow of the narrative is missing which sadly failed to make the scares and tension they were effective. . Normally a capable hero with a sexy image, Emraan Hashmi looks exactly like a hired actor who just keeps doing the tasks assigned to him by his pay package. Almost the same applies to the heroine Nikita Dutta, although she is not in the same group of celebrities as Emraan.
The police investigation could have been adequately continued to link it to the facts of the couple in a parallel treatment that surely would have added to the suspense and tension. As we’ve hinted at, all the characters, except perhaps the father and rabbi roles, have been just pieces to be put together by an editor, not the director. Shallow scares are also needlessly built up like the stiff-faced maid who eventually became an ordinary human being. In fact, there are some scary moments, but they just end there, leaving the movie to wander aimlessly for a while until it’s time to create more scares. By the time the final twist of the story arrives, it’s too late, because all the previous connection scenes are not fully shown, hiding the crucial signs or signals that amount to a case of deception from the audience. Cheating is a part of cinema for a number of reasons, but it shouldn’t be too obvious or deliberately motivated.
A flashback is imposed to explain or justify the spirit and it turns out to be a clichéd romantic story that ends in gore and horror. I feel it’s a missed opportunity to make a positive contribution to creating a ‘different’ horror genre in India. On the plus side, the film is technically sound in photography, framing, and camera movements. The performances cannot be called powerful, because the script did not allow this. Still, the movie doesn’t bore you enough to quit halfway through, it forces you to go through the whole movie hoping for something else, and you’ll finally feel like it’s okay to watch it just once. The reviews seem to be too harsh, perhaps because most of the critics had seen the original movie and were completely disappointed that the same director let them down in this new version. As is the general rule, sequels, prequels, or remakes can never be expected to match the originals, barring a few rare exceptions in world cinema. So the horror genre remains mostly where it has always been in India. Poor me!