Look at what the ‘cracked’ dragged in. After Phoonk you’d think the woman-possessed was thing of the past. RIP! But wait wait waitâ?¦it’s time for another lady to elevate far beyond her bed in a horizontal high that boggles the head. 1920 is Phoonk in Scotland (or wherever the scenic spot where the devil catches hold of our nubile nymphet as she rests her head ion the rattling bed ) moved back by almost a century.

Screenwriter Vikram Bhatt attempts to thrust a wazan (weight) over the theme of exorcism by taking the supernatural theme into British India. So we have â??sipahisâ??, mutineers, rebels and renegades popping into the Scottish scenario like random guests at a outdoor masquerade party. And then we have a doctor mentioning a certain “Dr. Zigmund Fried (sic)” who is doing research somewhere far away from this film’s horrific domestic tussles, researching on the human psychology. By the time we get to the grisly climax with flying chairs and human limbs vying for the leading lady’s goggle-eyed antics in the name of the shudder and the unholy ghost, writer-director Vikram Bhatt, trying to do a razz-matazz to his supernatural hit Raaz five years ago, is on to a bigger formula.

The holy chants of Christian priest (Raj Zutsi, trying hard to pronounce Latin correctly and translating it promptly into English and Hindi) merge into the chants of the Hanuman Chalisa. Boss, yeh to supernatural secularism ho gaya! There’s something terribly artificial about implanting a historicity into a tale that essentially wants to tap the most primitive and primeval fears of the audience. Rather than going into a gaatha (tale) of gaddari (betrayal) during times of cruel colonialism Bhatt’s narrative should have just stuck to its gory guns. Then maybe, just maybe, the B and C centre audiences who got the jitters watching Phoonk would’ve trembled at the diabolic toss and turn that the love birds experience in a verdant castle that is supposed to be situated somewhere in India in the year 1920. So panoramic and “National Geographic” is the view that we often want the lead pair (both wooden and uninspired even when the ghouls provoke them into animated retaliation) to just move out of camera range.

Alas, 1920 has a scary story to tell. We are scared all right. Though for reasons other than the ones Vikram Bhatt would want us to be.