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RGV announced the making of Darna Zaroori Hai on the morning of the Darna Mana Hai release day in August 2003, not waiting for the Box Office to determine the making of the sequel. To refresh memories, Darna Mana Hai & Darna Zaroori Hai are RGV’s compilation films consisting of 6-7 segments each, helmed by a proportionate number of directors, releasing 3 years apart from one another.

I’m not going to warn the reader about this review containing spoilers. My contention being exactly this – that Darna Zaroori Hai delivers its chills despite knowing any number of plot twists and scary scenes from the film. Most often than not, like any good horror film must, Darna Zaroori Hai lets you know when the horror is coming. And still scares you.

Who wouldn’t have conjectured Norman Bates’ hand behind the mystery in Hitchcock’s Psycho? Nevertheless one’s fear is all the more heightened precisely because of this knowledge, as there’s no saying what shape Bates would take. And the identity he assumes in the climactic encounter with the victim’s sister [Lila Crane, as played by Vera Miles, & by Julianne Moore in the remake] has left us with one of the most frightening moments in cinema. Likewise, who in the audience wouldn’t know that the daadima played by Ava Mukherji is a ghost? Ghost she is - a storytelling, children-loving ghost.

Darna Zaroori Hai opens with a prologue that sets the film’s title up. All the clichés in the book are employed in this segment that seemingly parodies RGV’s own Darna Mana Hai. Protagonist Sathish, still-dependent on domineering ‘mummy’ and refusing to grow up, ventures to watch firstday-lastshow of Darna Mana Hai, & intends to take the short cut through the small-town’s graveyard, on what happens to be a New Moon’s night. The graveyard’s littered with tombstones of the dead – unanimously Christian including the latest entry, 20yrs old virginal Sylvia Martis. [As a rule, in this film, all ghosts are the recently dead (with the lone exception of the long deceased daadima), some of whom dead to the extent of a few minutes; curious that there seems to be no in-between zones, a purgatory of sorts. But hell, who’s been through it? None who’s reading this review, I’d imagine. In RGV’s book the recently dead are more eligible than any other for ghosthood] Sathish watches his favourite director’s film with total disdain & is headed back home through the same graveyard. Pursued by an ankletted ghost Sathish escapes un-possessed till he’s shocked by a visual manifestation of his fears in the well-lit, slick Darna Zaroori Hai publicity cut-out placed outside the cemetery. Fear, that has gotten the better of a disbelieving Sathish, will get you too. So croons once-upon-a-time-nubile-fantasy Nisha Kothari in the film’s only song that doubles up as an opening credit sequence.

Darna Zaroori Hai moves on to tell its story about five adventure seeking pre-teen kids who land-up at daadima’s haveli, taking refuge from rain. Over kids’ claim of not perturbed by fear, the ghostly granny lures them into listening to scary tales that would prove the existence of Manoj N Shyamalan’s ‘those that we don’t name’.

There is a story of a professor [Amitabh Bachchan (AB) in the cameo of his life] haunted by a mysterious stranger in his intermittent appearances. In what turns out to be a brilliantly crafted gem of a segment, RGV, mounts the whole segment in one single scene of classical construction, clearly demarcating its cinematic space – professor Bachchan assuming one side of the frame throughout, student Ritesh Deshmukh the other side , and the ghost represented by camera movements, which in turn is the audience itself. We see AB’s reflection in the smartly positioned mirror trimming his nostrils before we see both the reflection & AB himself, disrupted by a knock on the door. AB opens the door for his student from the university, Ritesh Deshmukh, who’s here to discuss some academic theory. In a series of Shot Reverse Shots, AB is, seemingly, distracted by someone/something’s lurking presence and apologises as soon as noticed by his student. The third such occasion AB springs off his chair to point accusingly towards the camera & urges Deshmukh to bear witness. AB tells him about a mysterious man in a black hat who’s been taunting him in the last 6 months. In this tense atmosphere of Deshmukh’s denial of the presence of anyone else’s & a sympathetic plea as to where whoever is, AB crouched under the table in mortal fear [half-mortified, & half in vindictive sarcasm], shows him the mirror. Camera, in close-up, pans with Deshmukh to catch a reflection on the mirror; Deshmukh is shocked, so is the audience. We, alongwith Deshmukh, have just caught Deshmukh’s own reflection. Completely outraged at having been made fun of, Deshmukh starts for the door packing his books. AB stops him, pleads not to be accused of madness, & in the segment’s penultimate chill shows Deshmukh the ghost, whose POV the camera/ audience has been assuming. RGV, in close-up again, moves from Ritesh Deshmukh to, as the audience is expecting a shock, his reflection on the mirror. As we heave a sigh of relief now that its only his reflection, the camera completes its movement to include AB’s reflection; the white-eyed mysterious black man in a black hat in the place of, what should have been, AB’s reflection.

It could be argued triangularly as to who the ghost is, in this segment. Is Amitabh the ghost, on the count of his possessed self that shows the dead man when reflected in a mirror? is Ritesh Deshmukh the ghost as it is through his eyes that we see the ghost – ghosts see ghosts? Or the ghost could be the ghost as he is a ghost. By the end of the segment the mouse & the bait seem to have changed places. Slow fade-out to the story-narrating ghost of a daadima. If only daadima could speak like I do!

One of the disbelieving kids is soon possessed by death & martyred into ghostdom. Though the gimmick starts off in a silly way every time we return to the central segment (kids at the haveli) that’s interspersed between the scary stories, it turns seriously eerie when the ghost-rendered kid’s look is acknowledged by the other ghost in the room - daadima. The pick amongst them is the one in the second half where an old Black & White photograph welcomes one of the kids, who’s gone looking for drinking water, that gets employed for manipulative Shift Focus. As we look up, along with the kid, who’s ready to take a swig, we catch an absolutely shocking image; the woman in the portrait is now smiling, wickedly so. After this it’s frightening, depending on your neurological make, to have the courage to look at any picture the 2nd time round, when one is alone, & in the dark. The central segment that gives rise to, & connects, the rest of the segments in the film draws curtains with the revelation that the daadima has been dead for long, & that she loves kids; enough to turn them all into her own ilk over an eventful productive night.

The remaining segments in the film are made up of:
1. Highway traveller Arjun Rampal, bored inheritor Makarand ‘mercurial ‘ Deshpande, & his trophy wife Bipasha Basu playing musical chairs with lies, and spooking each other out. Arjun Rampal disbelieves in the existence of ghosts, atleast until proven otherwise. While the Makarand-Bipasha two-some is busy doing the proving by summoning ghosts through Black Magic, Rampal shows himself for the ghost he’s recently turned into, delivering his “once summoned, sometimes, it’s very difficult to send them back” last laugh. This segment is also almost entirely built with close-ups (against the backdrop of crimson-red curtains) that alternate three ways between the protagonists – clearly cuing the audience into the certainty of one of them being the ghost. In RGV’s universe, any which way is a Cul-De-Sac.
2. If you are a smoker you will invariably miss first couple of minutes of this post-interval segment. In his desperate attempts to get clients to insure against the only certainty in life, namely death, an insurance agent (Rajpal Yadav) pulls all tricks NOT part of his trade, to sell his wares to a couple (Suniel Shetty, Sonali Kulkarni). This segment is reminiscent of Darna Mana Hai whose fears were more psychological than supernatural. If only we were to pause for a moment to ask why Yadav was carrying a loaded gun that kills himself while earlier he assures us of nakli knife & such other harbinger of death tools. But pause we don’t as we are at the mercy of a mix of the film’s compelling narration, & the escapist break-neck speed.
3. Anil Kapoor makes a very bold move in portraying the twosome of filmmakers Karan Johar & Aditya Chopra, as Karan Chopra, in his essaying a superstar director venturing to dabble with horror for his next film. On his way out of Bombay looking for inspiration he picks up bohemian hitchhiker Mallika Sherawat [absolutely ordinary-looking, like she always does, in her own idea of bohemia], who with considerable build-up confesses to being a ghost. Anil Kapoor gives in to the vagaries of his profession, & his heart condition while Mallika, in reality, has been only playing ghost. There’s a commendable tunnel sequence (Bombay-Pune expressway) that is ingenious in its use of local location. While Mallika’s just given hints to her netherworld status we drive into the dark tunnel praying for poor once-Mr.India Anil Kapoor.
4. The finale segment tells the story of a reveller, Randeep Hooda, possessed by a dowry-victim-of-a-ghost who avenges the ghost’s tormentors. In what turns out to be a alternation between the genres of the detective film & the horror film the detective genre is pursued by the brilliant Zakir Hussain playing a cop and the horror genre by the camera movements representing a throbbing ghost. Both genres merge when the detective in Zakir Hussain is rendered obsolete with his own possession by the ghost. Now Hussain & Hooda are hand-in-glove to restore justice to a deserving person, albeit a ghost.

The ghost in RGV’s machine seems to be his Soundman Dwarak Warrier. Akin to ghosts fighting RGV’s battle, Warrier is the faithful knight who has lent crispness to the Bollywood cinematic soundscape. The viewer is the detective in a horror film, & more so in a film made up of 7 segments. The pleasure of openings/ beginnings is seven folded in this seven-segmented film. Openings are expository in cuing us into the film in a way the rest of the film struggles to keep up with. It is in the opening that we, as viewers, are liberally allowed to make guesses about a film’s unwrapping. As a smart horror movie should be, Darna Zaroori Hai follows rules of fairplay, allowing its audience to consider stories presented here as farfetched, if they have to. More the audience is allowed to be cynical & disbelieving, more the impact of the intended shocks. RGV does not stop here; he, & his team of directors, supply answers to the very questions they have encouraged audience disbelief.

p.s. I have no clue how the film plays on the small screen. Watching the film in the cinema was a trippy experience for me. It’s a Date-movie, an engaging Make-Out movie, a Drive-In movie, and a Horror Game.

thani.