Raaz Reboot Review

Emraan Hashmi’s career has been faltering lately with a string of failures at the box office. Nothing seems to be working for him. After his brief foray into content based cinema he is back doing those roles which he aced in the start of his career. He’s also back with the Bhatts. Vikram Bhatt is trying to revive the horror genre with this movie. Will they taste success after long? Let’s have a look.

Story: Shaina (Kriti Kharbanda) and Rehan (Gaurav Arora) move to Romania after Rehan receives a job offer there. But they become distanced in the foreign land and strange things start happening to Shaina. When her own husband is not ready to believe her, in comes her ex Aditya (Emraan Hashmi). Aditya tells her that he will save her. To unravel the Raaz of this Raaz Reboot, you have to see the convoluted climax.

Screenplay and Direction: Vikram Bhatt resorts to the same old tricks of startling the audience with creaking doors, blood oozing from random places, faces with no facial features etc. The only thing new about the paranormal creature is that it utters the ‘F-word’ a bit too much. The twist that Vikram Bhatt put in was evident from miles away. Even the story of this reboot is identical to the one in 1920 London. The Raaz series has consistently gone downhill in terms of quality and Raaz Reboot is a deathnail. The narrative doesn’t work and neither does the pacing. Even old Hindi TV shows had better aesthetics.

Raaz Reboot Movie Review

Raaz Reboot had a lot of scope to showcase the beauty of Romania and except for a handful of occasions it manages to make us forget that the movie doesn’t take place in a Mumbai studio. The costume design is good, however. The editing of Raaz Reboot is off by about 20 kmps as scenes jump from one to another without much cohesion. It should have been way tighter to keep the pace flowing quickly. The background score is clichéd and doesn’t particularly add to the scary quotient. The music of Raaz Reboot was expected to be a blockbuster but none of the songs have made any long lasting impact whatsoever.

Acting: Emraan Hashmi appears quite a few minutes into the film and instantly makes it better with his presence. He plays the stalkerish yet charming ex quite convincingly. The debut actress Kriti Kharbanda is a looker alright but she falls short in the acting department. Her screams and squeaks aren’t spooky at all. Gaurav Arora plays the second fiddle here but he’s not half bad. If he had more content to work with, he would have definitely done a more convincing job.

Conclusion: The movie which was supposed to kick-start the Raaz franchise is looking more and more like the death nail to the franchise. The spooky moments are few and far between, and even the ones which are there aren’t quite as impactful because the effects are stereotypical and the Vfx is downright insulting to the audience. They should have spent more time on rendering the Vfx. Ignoring all that, Raaz Reboot doesn’t work as a film either because the narrative is too slow and the pacing too uneven.

Pros:

• Emraan and Gaurav try their best
• The costume design is believable

Cons:

• The narrative is very slow and uneven
• The scares are few in number
• The horror tropes used are stereotypical
• The lead actress doesn’t leave an impact
• The music and background music don’t work
• The production design feels like that of a TV show

Rating: