POV: Why Raaz still remains my ultimate nightmare!

Raaz still sends a shiver down the spine even after a million rewatches, thanks to its intriguing story, spooky setting, and powerful characters!

It's Halloween eve, and as super-cute trick-or-treat reels from the West and pictures of our uber-cool friends celebrating the night flood our feeds, our ever-reliable companion, television, pulls us into the festive spirit with a marathon of horror films, binging which reduces our FOMO to some extent. A staple of the season is the 2002 Vikram Bhatt horror-thriller Raaz, starring Dino Morea and Bipasha Basu, a film that redefined Bollywood's supernatural genre. 

I’m sure I speak for many when I say that Raaz still sends a shiver down the spine, even after a million rewatches, and rightly so. The horror-musical, yes, you read that right, aced the genre in its purest form through an intriguing story, spooky setting, and powerful characters, like they say, with aesthetics and no prosthetics! The film followed Sanjana (Bipasha Basu) and Aditya (Dino Morea) moving to the isolated hills of Ooty to save their marriage, only for their lives to be disrupted by a vengeful ghost- Malini (Malini Sharma). The detailing of her character added another dimension to the film as she wasn’t just any other monster baying for human blood but a spirit driven by an intense sense of betrayal and obsession towards Aditya, making her quest more personal and unsettling. Even when alive, she was presented as a deeply disturbed, mental asylum runaway, which added more depth to the psychological terror. Her sinister presence through the distorted whispering and shrieking cries made sure the viewers remained terrified throughout the run-time and dreaded the idea of moving out of their bed during the ungodly hours of the night, later!

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Setting is a character in itself in a horror or a supernatural outing, and Raaz delivered on that front with style. The story was set in the misty, isolated hills of Ooty within a haunted bungalow, where the dense, dark forests surrounding the house rendered a continuous sense of terror and suffocation. The film wasand still is a sleepover staple for my generation, as watching it amid unwanted running commentary and the shenanigans of mischievous friends only doubles the fun and fear of the experience, turning every scream from the forest, the dreadful bathtub reveal, and those spine-tingling bathroom scenes into memorable moments of shared screams and laughter!

At the risk of sounding timid, I’d still confess the sequence that haunted me most was the climax, where Sanjana is asked to cremate Malini’s mortal remains to thwart the vengeful spirit’s plan to claim a hospitalized Aditya’s life. Ashutosh Rana’s Professor Agni Swaroop, who also serves as exorcist, guides a nervous and terrified Sanjana through a graveyard where the ominous rains, strong gusts of winds, and his chanting of mantras make the setting all the more tense and thrilling. But here’s where the nightmare peaks - the professor, Sanjana’s last ray of hope, suddenly stiffens mid-chant with his eyes turning pure white as he gets possessed by Malini, compelling Sanjana to finish the ritual alone and delivering one of the most terrifyingly thrilling climaxes of Bollywood, delivering pure chaos and unreal heroism in unimaginable miseries!

Having said that, thinking of Raaz’s story of Sanjana so easily forgiving her self-absorbed, cheating husband and calling the supernatural disruptions, which, by the way, were totally the result of Aditya’s misadventures, as a test of their bond (Suhaag ke rang mein asli nikhaar aaya) does feel unsettling as a grown woman. However, there’s no denying the fact that the film, through its suspenseful and thrilling presentation, established a new standard for horror in Hindi cinema and still remains a cult-classic of the genre!

What do you think about the film? Tell us in the comments below!'