Phoonk

Today, I watched Phoonk with my roommates. I’ve seen few movies on black magic in Telugu, which are usually scary. Phoonk is really very low on getting me scared. Except some sound effects, there’s hardly anything that can scare badly. I watched his Bhoot, which was better than Phoonk in scaring the hell out of me. But, Bhoot was a different kind of movie.

On the whole, RGV kept Phoonk short and simple, his usual style. The movie is all about black magic. When I was at school, I used to hear stories on black magic from fellow students and teachers as well. There was one guy who told me that his grand father was killed by his enemies using black magic. I’m very neutral to the concept of God, I know people who are for and against the concept of God. It’s really hard to think of these abstract subjects. But one for sure, God exists if and only if devil exists. Oh! Gimme a break.

Coming to the plot of movie. The movie opens with Rajeev, a builder, talking to his employees. While excavating for the building, a stone like Lord Ganesh in shape is found, so all his workers want him to construct a small shrine to the Lord. But, Rajeev being an atheist, doesn’t agree to the proposal. His lawyer friend, who is neither an atheist nor a theist, tries to convince him that there is hardly anything he is going to lose by constructing the shrine. But Rajeev is just not convinced. After that, to celebrate a new contract that he won, he throws a party at which the lawyer reveals that Rajeev’s employees had cheated on him. Rajeev angered by that, throws those two employees out of the scene and dismisses them. As a revenge to the humiliation, the two thrown out employees plan to do black magic on Rajeev’s daughter, knowing Rajeev loves his daughter so much.

It all begins then, the typical black magic stuff – bones, lemon, kumkum and turmeric powder appear in his courtyard. Being an atheist, he asks his servants to throw it off, but they refuse to do so and Rajeev throws it off in the bin and get back to his work. After that, his daughter complains that somebody has cut her hair. Rajeev hardly pays attention to the matter. After that, again typical black magic stuff, some one picks up mud from the place bones were placed, after the girl stands there.

Then, it becomes worse. The girl behaves wild, she shouts hysterically with out her knowledge. Her arm gets twisted with out her knowledge and she floats in air. Rajeev and his wife worried, call up on the doctor and a psychiatrist. As usual, they look it from scientific view and take her to hospital. But finding nothing unusual, they say it’s a split personality kind of disorder and treat that way. A fake swamiji appears in middle trying to drive the evil spirits away. Rajeev’s mother feels that doctors can hardly do anything and says black magic was done on the little girl.

The lawyer, seeing all the pain his friend is undergoing, asks him to consult another magician who knows about black magic. They bring him to the little girl. The magician detects that and asks to take him to the house. He detects everything bad there and says two people have done this black magic for taking revenge and there was another person helping them and points to his driver. Then, they find where the evil people (his ex-employees) are and destroy the black magic. The magician kills the evil lady by his super power.

On a whole, it’s a good movie, but not scary enough. Sudeep’s performance is very good, so is the little girl’s. There are open ends and RGV has announced a contest to suggest the story for Phoonk 2. Try it out if you can.

Related Read: A report on banamati/chetabadi and how strong the superstition is prevalent in the masses of Andhra Pradesh.