Raat

<p>A family of four moves into a house that is allegedly haunted. Manisha Sharma ( ) aka “Mini” is studying in college. Her father is Mr. Sharma ( ), while her mother is Shalini Sharma ( ). Deepak (Kushant) is Mini’s classmate and boyfriend. Mini’s nephew Bunty (Master Atit) finds a cat in the house’s basement. The cat has an eerie look on its face with its spot-staring eyes. One day the cat ventures behind Mr. Sharma’s car and is killed accidentally while the car is reversed. The cat is buried in the backyard without Bunty’s knowledge. Their neighbor, Nirmalamma, is the grandmother to Rashmi, Mini’s classmate. Nirmalamma spooks them with a fearful response after hearing Mini is their new neighbour. Bunty finds another cat which bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead cat. The family gets its first shock. Another day, Mini and Deepak decide to enjoy a ride to the city limits. While returning home, Deepak’s bike rear tyre goes flat. Deepak rides with a passerby to get a spare tyre from a village nearby and asks Mini to wait for him. On returning, Deepak finds Mini sitting beside a tree near a pond, clutching her face and apparently weeping. Approaching her, Deepak stares at her fierce, reddening eyes (resembling the dead cat eyes), and slips into the pond. All of a sudden, Mini turns normal and calls to Deepak to come out of the pond. The next day, Mini attends her Rashmi’s friend’s marriage accompanying her. Rashmi is brutally killed, with her neck broken and head turned all the way back. The police officer investigating the case notices that during interrogation, Mini twists her doll’s head exactly the way Rashmi’s neck was twisted. The officer then meets with an accident while riding out and dies. These events lead Mini’s parents to seek professional help. Shalini approaches their neighbour, Nirmalamma, while Mr. Sharma takes the help of a psychiatrist ( ) regarding as nonsense the occult thoughts that his wife believes is the reason for their daughter’s horror-stricken behaviour. Nirmalamma advises Shalini to seek the services of Sharji ( ), who lives in Falaknuma. Sharji first visits his “guru” (Vijayachander) who has taken in the remote Falaknuma and gets fire-power ashes as a weapon. Sharji then locates the ghost (Sunanda) in Mini’s house basement under the floor and finds it to be that of the woman who was the previous owner’s mistress and who was murdered brutally. Later, while the killer is in bed with his new paramour, the ghost of his former mistress kills him, as her hands and arms emerge from the bed and twist his neck, much like Rashmi’s was done. Following horrific events involving the ghost trying to kill Deepak, Sharji finally neutralizes her with the help of holy chants and the ashes. The ghost finally leaves Mini’s body with a thundering flash. On the one hand, scientific tests involving and other medical procedures are conducted on Mini. This, Mr. Sharma believes, is the only way Mini could be “cured”. However, Sharji has his own explanation of darkness beyond the light, that doesn’t vanish, but is only diminished to an extent. Background score for the film was composed by . Upon release, N. Krishnaswamy of gave the film a positive review, calling it “technically superb” and writing that it “should be a reasonably tasty item in the horror film buff’s menu card”. In 2013, Amrah Ashraf of called it the scariest film he had seen, saying Varma’s was a “subtler, sweeter remake of “. Suchitra Patnaik of credits this film for changing the Indian horror film scene, stating: “It had actors pulling off stellar performances and a serene yet dramatic background score, making this 1992 movie a blockbuster hit.”</p>