I had never heard of Krishna Cottage (a Hindi language film) before I sat down to watch it so I had no expectations either way, good or bad. Knowing that it Sohail Khan was billed as the lead didn’t give me any high expectations of the film as I’ve never really been a fan of his.

PLOT SUMMARY

The film starts with a professor donating a book he’s written to a college entitled “Nine and a half stories” (that’s the English translation of the book’s actual title). When asked why it’s not ten stories he says it’s because the last story is unfinished. The principal of the college locks the book away in a storage room and tells his staff not to let anyone near it.

Some time later Manav comes back to college after an apparent absence of 4 years with his fiancée Shanti. That same day Manav meets and is highly intrigued by new girl Disha who also seems to take an instant liking to him. She is invited to their engagement party that same evening and during the party Manav ends up having to rescue Disha from a falling chandelier. She is very shaken by this and Manav, Shanti and several of their friends end up driving her home. They encounter a problem on the way and end up spending the night at Krishna Cottage where all sorts of eerie things happen. From then on it seems the friends are being killed off one at a time. Why is this happening? What has it to do with Disha? What is the link with these mysterious events and the book that the professor gave to the college?

CHARACTER AND STORY ANALYSIS

As far as spooky films go, let me tell you that the numerous songs in the film drove me to distraction, so much so that within 30 minutes of the film I wanted to switch off. When will Bollywood learn that you can’t have song and dance routines in a thriller or horror film if you want the audience to take it seriously?

The premise of the story initially seemed really stupid and was very confusing. One minute you wonder if you’re supposed to be trying to figure out the significance of the book left at the college and another you’re trying to figure out if Disha is supposed to be a good or bad character. It’s only at the end of the film that things are tied up and although it was fairly wacky, it was a satisfactory ending and I’m glad I stuck it out to the end.

Manav is played by Sohail Khan, the brother of the infamous Salman Khan who is an A list Bollywood star. Sohail is not a B list actor, maybe a C list but his acting did not impress in the slightest in this film. Pretty much all of the supporting actors did a better job in their roles than he did but I have to admit I found him more aesthetically pleasing in this film than in any other film I’m seen him in. I don’t know if he’s looking better as he’s got older or maybe it was the makeup they used on in, but he wasn’t as unappealing as I’ve found him in previous films. Sadly, I can’t say anything has improved with his acting, he’s too wooden and even though I’m not a fan of his very famous brother, Salman, at the very least I can’t deny that he’s a good actor.

Isha Koppikar played Disha, I don’t really know this actress. I’ve seen her in one film before that I can recall but she was killed off quite quickly so I only really saw her on screen for about 10 minutes. In Krishna Cottage, she’s one of the female leads; well actually she has more on screen time than Natassha who plays Manav’s fiancée. I wouldn’t say Koppikar was poor in the role but she wasn’t very good either. All in all she gave a very mediocre performance throughout the film but she was quite convincing in the climax of the film. I found it very hard to understand her character’s motivation throughout and even at the end of the film, I thought her justifications for what went on were pretty feeble.

Natassha as Shanti was rather a weak character. She made some half-hearted attempts at scolding her fiancé for being so unreasonably attached to this other woman who he seems quite obsessed with from day one. If that was my fiancé behaving like that on the day of our engagement and beyond I would be having more than a few words with him about it. Manav behaves unnaturally towards this newcomer yet Shanti seems to accept his behaviour quite easily and only eventually snaps and goes to see Disha at her home only to find her mother there who tells her a very worrying thing which really freaks her out. Why did she not confront her fiancé rather than going to Disha’s home? It doesn’t really make a lot of sense.

Vrajesh Hirjee plays Talli, one of the group of friends at the college. I actually found his acting to be more credible than any of the others in the film and felt he was more of the male lead than the actual lead. Talli is the one who figures out a lot of what’s going on and tries to warn the others before it’s too late but in several instances he gets to them too late. Out of the group of friends he does actually seem to be the one with the brains and intelligence to work out a lot of what’s going on in relation to “the book” and Disha. I guess Hirjee is not someone who would be cast as a lead as he’s not exactly good-looking but he actually had quite a lot of screen time in a large part of the film.

Rati Agnihotri plays Sunita Menon, a psychic that the friends go to for help. Agnihotri was quite a big star in the 80s and sadly, she’s ended up doing silly roles like this these days. She was supposed to be a spiritualist, possessing supernatural powers but oh boy, did some of her scenes have me laughing really hard as it just seemed very silly to me rather than creepy or even convincing. It wasn’t supposed to be funny but it came across as quite comical, especially the last scene she appeared in.

I have to mention Divya Palat who played one of the friends who is killed off quite early on. I think she was chosen for the role for her capacity to look semi-scared and do lots of screaming. Her character reminded me of those young women you have in teen thrillers who gets killed off in the first few scenes, except this character’s screaming scene just went on for ages and eventually I felt like killing her myself.

I don’t know how many films’ plots were “borrowed” to make this film but it really does come across as a mish-mash of various stories thrown together in an attempt to make a scary movie. It wasn’t particularly scary and I can honestly say that there were no scenes which made me feel even slightly jumpy.

A rather major thing that bugged me about the film not making a lot of sense was the lack of ANY police investigating throughout the whole film. Even when people are being killed off, students at that and on college grounds in a gory fashion, no one seems to take any notice except for the immediate friends circle. Do these people have no family members? They could have at least had a detective involved somewhere in the film helping to solve the mystery, even if they killed him off at the end but at least it would have given a bit more credibility to the plot.

Oh and I can’t not mention the biggest cliché of them all! In part of a bizarre storyline, the couple whose engagement party it is supposed to be, leave their own party with several of their friends to drive home a girl they’ve only just met that day at college and their car crashes into a sheet of ice when they’re driving through a tunnel (!!!????) rendering the car useless and meaning them all having to take refuge in the nearest place – Krishna Cottage. How much more stereotypical do you have to get?!

MUSIC

What can I say about the music for the film? Firstly, let me stress again – THERE IS NO PLACE FOR SONG AND DANCE NUMBERS IN A THRILLER! The songs themselves were ones that you hear and instantly forget, most of them I listened to for about a minute before fast forwarding. Playback singers included most of the usual singers for Bollywood films these such as Alka Yagnik, Sunidhi Chauhan, Shaan and Kumar Sanu – none of which delivered any songs which made any impact on me whatsoever.

The background music for the film was somewhat better than the music used in the songs. Eerie enough where required but nothing of real note.

OVERALL

If I had given up watching the film from where I was getting very bored I would have been generous to give it a poor 1 out of 5 stars but in a way I’m glad I stuck it out to the end as it somewhat redeemed itself enough with the ending to get a decent enough 3 out of 5 stars. Not something I’ll be watching again though but certainly not the worst Bollywood attempt at a thriller that I’ve seen. Fans of thrillers might just enjoy this and possibly have fun trying to work out where bits of the story were lifted from!

TECHNICAL

Release date: April 2004
Starring: Sohail Khan, Isha Koppikar, Natassha,
Supporting case: Vrajesh Hirjee, Rati Agnihotri, Divya Palat, Raj Zutshi
Director: Santram Varma
Producers: Ekta Kapoor and Shobha Kapoor
Music: Anu Malik
Duration: 130 minutes