1920 - A Review

A 100 times better than Phoonk, 1920 evokes fear in you, and much more than that, keeps its element of suspense throughout. As the name suggests, the film is set in the year 1920, and starts off to a mysterious death in a spooky castle, which makes you sit on edge from the start. It then takes a detour, and we get to see the love angle in the story for quite some time. Ofcourse, the hero and heroine get married, and end up at the same castle as above, to finish what no one has been able to so far - raze the castle to the ground and build a grand hotel in its place.

Strange things begin to happen, and the girl, Lisa, starts experiencing out of the ordinary incidents, which she confides to a priest of the church. Seizing an opportune moment, the ghost in the castle possesses Lisa, and issues an ultimatum that she's going to die within four days, and he wants her soul to be his for eternity. Arjun, her husband, goes exploring all he can about what happened to the castle, and how it got to be a haunted one. He learns all he can, the ghost is a traitor soldier, who betrays his country and fellow men, and takes refuge in the castle under false pretences. The then owner of the castle, Rani Gayatri, does what she can while she secretly sends for troops, and the soldier is killed by her troops. A ghost seeking revenge. Arjun decides the only way to save his girl is to trust God; he holds Lisa tight and recites the Hanuman Chalisa; the mantra is all powerful, and the ghost is destroyed forever, and all is well. Turns out that Lisa is Rani Gayatri re-born(yea, we expected something like this, after all, its a Bollywood movie) and the film comes to an end.

The filming, screenplay, and dialogues are nice; though the castle doesnt look like Indian in the least. It has a distinct Victorian style about it, and the locales, the hills, the meadows, show that it is not India. The protagonists acted well, much, much better than the lead actors in Phoonk. Adah Sharma as Lisa did a good job, her acting looked convincing. Did you know that the castle where the shooting for the film took place is one of the 10 most haunted castles in England? It seems the actors were as afraid when shooting the film as we were while watching the film. Must have been a first for any horror movie. hehe.