CREATURE

Super Cassettes Industries Ltd.’s Creature (UA) is a horror film made in 3D. Ahana Dutt (Bipasha Basu), whose father had commited suicide due to pressure put, and unfair means adopted, by a builder on him to sell him his property, indeed sells off all the property to the builder and leaves Bombay to settle in a forest area. She starts a forest hotel, Glendale, in the jungle, by taking a bank loan. The opening of the hotel goes off well as several guests have already checked into the hotel. Among the guests is Kunal Anand (Imran Abbas Naqvi) who poses as a celebrated author. Soon after the inauguration, a strange creature kills one of the hotel guests when he goes into the jungle with his newly-married wife. Soon, the creature also invades the hotel and kills a cook. The forest officers, who have not seen the creature, are perplexed because the killings don’t look like the work of known animals. Then one day, the ferocious creature once again enters Glendale Hotel and runs riot, killing guests and staff members. The living guests this time get a glimpse of the entire creature which is huge in size.

Prof. Sadana (Mukul Dev), a Zoo­logy professor who has done research on such creatures, lands at the hotel. He asks Ahana to shut down the hotel immediately and vacate it. While all the guests leave instantly, Ahana has a change of mind and decides to stay back and fight the creature. Kunal Anand, who has by now fallen in love with her, also stays back. Soon the bank chairman visits Ahana and hands her papers seeking control over the hotel as she isn’t able to pay interest. As per her loan agreement, Ahana is to be given 10 days’ notice before she is asked for control of the hotel, and she asks the bank’s chairman for 10 days’ time. She has now to put an end to the creature menace in just 10 days if she is to save her hotel and keep its control with herself. Ahana, Kunal and Prof. Sadana meet the forest officer (Capt. Bikramjeet Kanwarpal) who is not too sympathetic towards them. But he comes around when they threaten to have action initiated against him. His deputy (Deepraj Rana) is more helpful and wholeheartedly extends his support. Anyway, the trio and the two forest officers set out to kill the creature but fail. In the process, the senior forest officer is killed by the creature.

Prof. Sadana, Ahana, Kunal and the surviving forest officer now learn that the creature is a brahmarakshas (neither a human being nor an animal) which has no place in heaven and hell. They also get to know from Dr. Moga (Mohan Kapur) that the brahmarakshas can be killed only with a weapon cleansed in neem water in a special pond on Guru Poornima. As Guru Poornima is many months away and as Ahana doesn’t have too much time, Dr. Moga gives them the gun (duly cleansed) and seven bullets left by his late father.

Are Ahana and group able to kill the brahmarakshas? Or do they get killed by it?

Vikram Bhatt has written a story which is quite routine except that there is a creature (computer-generated) involved this time. The creature is quite scary and its killings do send chills down the viewers’ spines but once they become repetitive, the fear element reduces. The screenplay, written by Vikram Bhatt and Sukhmani Sadana, is not as smooth and free-flowing as it ought to have been. The first half is quite interesting as the suspense about what the creature on the prowl looks like keeps the audience’s interest alive. The post-interval portion is stretched and loose. The romantic track is weak. What’s worse is the angle of Kunal’s identity – it looks silly and contrived. The track of the weapon needing to be cleansed in a typical style only, will not find much favour with the multiplex-frequenting and city-based audiences.

The songs come like speed-breakers in the film because they often serve to spoil the fear-filled tempo of the drama. Had the music been hit, even that drawback could’ve been overlooked but because the songs are not hit or very popular, they tend to become irritants. Comedy is conspicuous by its absence and that’s a minus point. Emotions fail to touch the heart. The plus point, of course, is the creature and its killings. Girish Dhamija’s dialogues are commonplace.

Bipasha Basu does fairly well but that’s not enough in a film of this kind where the viewers are expected to often break into cold sweat. Imran Abbas Naqvi makes a very ordinary debut. His acting is average, at best. Mukul Dev has his moments but he doesn’t have a very substantive role. Capt. Bikramjeet Kanwarpal is alright although his track does look over the top. Deepraj Rana is suitably restrained. Shireesh Sharma is okay. Mohan Kapur lends decent support in a tiny role. The rest of the actors are ade­quate.

Vikram Bhatt’s direction is fair. The horror scenes provide chills and thrills but the other scenes are lacklustre. The computer-generated creature looks creepy enough to evoke fear and hatred. Mithoon and Tony Kakkar’s music and lyrics serve a functional purpose more than anything else. No doubt, a couple of songs in the film are well-tuned but they are not hit and they don’t have haunting melo- dies. The best song, ‘Saawan’, comes in the end rolling titles, thereby reducing its impact. The choreography (Raju Khan) of only the ‘Saawan’ song deserves mention and even that is just about okay. Raju Rao’s background music needed to be much better. Praveen Bhatt’s camerawork is alright. Abbas Ali Moghul’s action and stunt choreography is nothing to shout about. Jayant Deshmukh’s sets are okay. Editing (Kuldeep Mehan) could have been better and sharper. The 3D effects are fairly good.

On the whole, Creature has novelty for the Hindi film-going audience and the fairly nice 3D effects, but a dull second half will limit its box-office prospects. It can hope to do fairly well in single-screen cinemas and in small centres, but business in multiplexes and big centres will be below the mark. In the final tally, it will prove to be a loss-making venture.