Cast: Sonam Mukherjee, Maanvi Gagroo, Varun Thakur
Directors: Yash Dave, Allison Patel
A film without a good publicity hardly gets audiences but the worries increase when it's titled as '?'. Yes, you read it right, a question mark.
Have you ever been to a film school where young people burst with fresh and weird ideas? Some of them who are too young to understand the nuances of serious cinema come up with inspired subjects. '?' is one of those films that take stimulation from western films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity', include 'Exorcism of Emily Rose' too if you want.
The beginning is quite predictable. A group of seven student filmmakers go on a trip to shoot a film. However the film showcases just one sequence where they appear to do something like shooting with a boy and a girl running around a tree. The happy-go-lucky group of three girls and four boys reaches to their destination which is actually a haunted place.
How do I know?
Well, every time the video frame fluttered, something unusual happened. Isn't this a proof enough of the place being haunted?
And yes, the free I mean evil spirit induces negative vibes too.
Come on, how can a film spread negative vibes across a non-living screen, so it happened to the group only.
As expected, strange things start to happen with the group where one of them is keeping the track of the events on his camera.
One girl of the group, Simran becomes the first one to fall into the trap. She makes life hell for others after being possessed but she finds company when others also start to behave in the same fashion.
Now come to the hook points.
The film starts without telling anything new, except the camera showcasing less bleached shots. The makers of 'The Blair Witch Project' had done a smart work by focussing more on the scenic beauty of the forest while their Indian counterparts Yash Dave and Allison Patel have concentrated more on the facial expressions.
Remember Dibaker Banerjee's 'Love Sex Dhokha' and the style of cinematography he had used. Burnt or over-exposed footage was used to stylise the narration while this film does it deliberately, even when we can see that the atmosphere is full of clouds.
There are scary moments in the film but the story is so dragged that you just want it to finish somehow. In fact, the scariest moment in the first half comes with the interval when the screen suddenly goes off with an eerie sound.
The second half is even more stretched. Why the hell the makers think that we can sustain for more than 90 minutes for a film which is actually a bad copy of many films?
Acting and editing, both are average. One of them could have hidden the other's flaws but they simply refuse to cooperate.
Background score is either absent or not complimentary to the story.
The film can't be compared to 'The Blair Witch Project' because this is not made in a typical documentary style. 'Blair Witch' had the ability to confuse your conscience that whether we are watching a well scripted film or a spontaneous documentary.
It's closer to 'Paranormal Activity', especially towards the end, but then once again who is interested in watching a direct and childish copy.
The film has a masterstroke in the end when it features the director's name and the screen goes black after it. people keep waiting for the end credits but it never rolls.
The film definitely has scary moments but the length mars the excitement.
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