‘Alone’ Movie review: There’s not much anyone can do

Director : Bhushan Patel

A besotted wife, an over-busy husband, and a dark secret is bundled up and transported to a sprawling house in the Kerala backwaters. A locked outhouse opens one stormy night, and then..

The ingredients for a horror film are all there, but ‘Alone’ very quickly becomes a tussle between the scenes that want you to be scared and the sequences where you are supposed to slurp at all the eye candy: both the lead players are made to show acres of skin. In the face of smooth bare backs, and the rippling pecs and packs, what’s a poor ghost to do?

Because that’s what seems to haunt Sanjana (Bipasha Basu), a ghostly presence that won’t let her in peace. Her return to her childhood home to meet her mother (Neena Gupta) brings back disturbing memories of a long lost sibling. And then start the squeaks, the creaking doors, and things that go bump.

There are a few mildly scary moments, but before the plot has a chance to build on those, it is made to scurry off to a waterfall to drench Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover. Or takes the action to bed, where things get hot and heavy. It gets to the point where you are not quite sure if the panting down to the pair burning up the sheets, or the ‘aatma’, waiting to make an entry?

Standard types start tumbling out. A healer with a couch in his office. A ‘baba’ who spouts ‘mantras’ and talks of ‘aghori sadhus’ and ‘bhoot puranas’. A faithful family retainer who moans and groans. Bipasha Basu roams about in negligees and shorts, and tries very hard, but is altogether too manicured to pull off a scare. And the debutant Karan Singh Grover follows the script, but there’s not much anyone can do when the pace is so staid that you want to tell the spirit to hurry it up, willya.

There really has to be a law against putting in songs in a horror film that wants us to take it seriously. As well as such priceless dialogues as : “isko extra sensory perception kehte hain”. You don’t say.