Cast: BipashaBasu, NawazuddinSiddiqui, Shernaz Patel Director: SuparnVerma Genre: Horror, Thriller Rating: 2/5

Another wooden chair rollicks, another worn-out creepy woman gives abysmal warnings that are meant to be disregarded and yet another time, a spirit enters another body and we find some lateral shifting in eyeballs accompanied with some grumpiness in voice. So, again, riding high on banalities arrive another horror movie, Aatma. Cartoonish, eh?

A sensitive girl Nia (DoyelDhawan); a loving mother Maya (BipashaBasu) and a malicious father, Abhay (Nawazuddin Siddiqui), who is all set to expurgate the throat of his spouse if only he gets an occasion to do so, live together in a flat. But there lies a timid twist in this story; father and the daughter are all in chubby-chubby love with one another. So much the love is that even death of the daddy can’t separate the duo. So he decides to chip back in this mortal world, only to take away the daughter once and for all!

If not for the cast, this would have been all down in litters. Bipasha Basu yet again carries a horror-fest on her shoulders. Being the central character, the wreckage of the tragedies was dripping from her face. Only this time, she was helped by an even more accomplished actor, Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Green fresh from his days of Gangs of Wasseypur, Siddiqui steals the scenes as if he is one masterful heist man.

Suparn Verma had his intentions right. He sure wanted to scare the living hell out of the audience by churning a mind bending thriller.  Sadly though, the attempt misfired and badly at that.  It is in the execution and the turtle-slow pace that the movie falters and not even the satisfactory visual effects helped this one from the mess it had become till it reached the climax.

A movie having a runtime under 100 minutes, that’s low, even by Hollywood standards, never does it outstay its welcome.  Though being thoroughly douche in three fourth of the affair, it is somehow redeemed by a climax, which is garden fresh in Bollywood.

Aatma could have been a stirring psychological drama but feels like a slave to the clichés. Generic and brain dead, this arrow went completely off-target!