?: A good dose of horror

Horror films might be the toughest to make. One misstep and it could end up making the audience double up with laughter instead of shivering in their pants.

?
A; Horror
Dir: Yash Dave and Allison Patel
Cast: Yaman Chatwal, Varun Thakur, Manvi Gagru
Stars: ** 1/2

Horror films might be the toughest to make. One misstep and it could end up making the audience double up with laughter instead of shivering in their pants. I must say ? has managed to stay in the right side of this thin line for most part of it.

A group of seven students in their final year decide to go out of town to shoot a film. Vicky (Yaman Chatwal) is the director of the film, Varun (Varun Thakur), the cameraman, is obsessed with filming everything, Manvi (Manvi Gagru) is helping Vicky with direction and CJ (Chirag Jain), Kiran (Kiran Bhatia) and Simran (Sonam Mukherjee) are the actors. Akki (Akhlaq Khan) is also part of the group. The group takes off to shoot in a bunglow in a deserted place. And here they encounter an unexplained, unseen evil force.

The movie starts with a lot of promise. The easy camaraderie between the actors (all natural actors) and filming done through a hand held video camera adds to the narration of the story. Barring a few cliches, the treatment of the story is quite unique and one ends up getting involved with the helplessness and the fear of the seven friends.

But the last twenty minutes of the film could have been far tighter. The camera goes so tizzy that you kind of lose the plot and bit of that fear too.

But all said and done at the given small budget of the film, the director duo Yash Dave and Allison Patel manage to keep you on the edge of the seat for some parts and eked out good performances by the cast.

A dark (literally ) film, ? deserves at least one watch, if you are a horror movie buff. There are far better horror films made earlier in Hollywood, but to give the devil (or the spirit?) its due, this one manages to be super scary in quite a few scenes.

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