PHEWNK !

Ticket prices vary from cinema to cinema, for those who value their money; you are definitely not getting your moneys worth, for any varied price, if you’re going for Ram Gopal Varma’s Phoonk.
With a star cast that the audience is not very familiar with and a story line that’s stale, the movie robs the audience of its precious 2 and half hours.

A vague concept of atheism, superstition and dark forces all rolled into one, the movie doesn’t have any concrete direction or concept.
For a scary movie, the first half includes one scary dream sequence that makes the audience laugh. As slow as the first half is, the second half has too much packed into it. With a hasty entrance of a new character ‘Baba Tantric’, a quiet and unexplained exit of another character takes place. The little boy, Raksha’s brother disappears entirely from the film in the second half. The scares and spooks are old and the done before kind, there’s no novelty in the film.

On a positive note, the actors fit their roles fairly well. The main lead, the father (Rajiv) played by Sundeep and the daughter (Raksha) played by Ahsaas Channa have given near natural performances. The loving wife Arti played by Amruta Khanvelkar has done a good job of her role. But sadly the Ganesha murti, the crow and the soft toys lying around the house, have hogged more footage than the actors!
Characters like the Maid and the Driver are not very well defined and have one constant expression of their faces throughout. The villainous couple in the movie are simply strange, and the woman Madhu played by Ashwini Kalsekar is entertaining, to say the least. She is scary in a mysterious way. Over all the acting of the cast was good.

The saving grace of the film would be its music; it is what makes the movie slightly spooky. The sound effects are bang on and the visual effects are also well done. Especially the last action scene, where Rajiv is fighting Madhu, the sequence keeps you glued.
Overall the movie could have been much shorter with better defined characters and most importantly it needed a stronger plot, something a little less clichéd.
‘One More Thought’ productions should think hard before producing another movie like Phoonk.