This film was a brave attempt at reviving the horror genre from the gutter as well as rescuing it from becoming the all out farce that it had deteriorated to at the hands of the Ramsay's and the Bhakri's during the 80's. Audiences had rapidly dwindled for the ultra low budget crap turned out by the Ramsay factory of creature features and horror in the 90's was all but confined to the small screen in the form of the dire Zee Horror show. With their fairly ambitious shocker Raat, the producer director team of Boney Kapoor and Ram Gopal Varma attempted to put horror back on the mainstream map, but alas for all their slickness and polish…..their efforts bore no fruit as audiences stayed away causing considerable financial heartache all around.

Horror thrillers were once again put on the back burner for a few years until Ram Gopal Varma himself returned with the rather more financially successful Kaun? late in the 90's. Raat is about a family, the Sharma's, that move into a new house in a new neighbourhood and soon they find themselves being besieged by strange, inexplicable happenings ….. the teenage daughter Mani Sharma (which is actually the producers real name) starts behaving in a decidedly odd manner, smiling menacingly as well as suddenly taking to wearing gold coloured contact lenses for a rather startling effect. As the plot thickens and Mani's condition deteriorates further and further, her hapless family desperately search for a cure.

The pragmatic and cold fish of a father turns to the world of psychiatry, science and medicine for his answers while his wife Rohini searches for her answer in the realms of the spiritual world. An old hag of a neighbour, about 120 years old, recounts chillingly how the owner of the house Rohini's family has moved into is cursed and houses some very dark, disturbing secrets. Slowly but surely as Mani's condition slides into Exorcist territory, though mercifully we have been spared the vomit and the head spinning this time around - a spiritual tantrik baba is sent for - how could they make a Bollywood horror film without resorting to the fabulous powers of the trusty old Tantrik Baba. However, this time the tantrik is a soft spoken, serious and brooding fellow in the form on Om Puri and he has finds that the house is indeed infected with evil. The scenes of his arrival at the house are Varma's noble but desperate attempts at creating the same ambience as Friedkin managed in The Exorcist in the scene when Father Merrin first arrives at the MacNeil residence in Washington.

Ram Gopal Varma's film is choc full of slow build up scenes, with over bearing music…..typical (cliché) music from 80's slasher movies - in fact in once bizarre scene when Mani has a fit claiming something to have burnt, the background music has been lifted directly from Halloween. For the avid horror fan watching Raat is like a game of spot the rip off, or lets be polite and say "homage" because they flow thick and fast, and it is indeed evident that Ram Gopal Varma spent considerable time watching genre classics like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th (classic?) Evil Dead, The Exorcist, Amityville Horror, Childs Play and so on. All these influences have been taken and fused into one jumble of a film which somehow works fairly well due to the strong performances and the relatively classy production values and slick if trite and cliché ridden direction. The background music while not as jarring as it was in Kaun? is very irritating and the most effective moments on screen are when music is at a minimum. However there are some excellent ideas along the way and some startlingly chilling scenes as well but they are largely undone by the sledgehammer like subtlety displayed by the director as if to make sure he drives a point home.

Everything about the movie is overdone and overwrought, but then that is something typical of desi movies in general. The film has its moments and is slickly put together - world apart from the rubber masked creatures of the Ramsay films - but that said, its still unoriginal and simply a rehash of several hit Hollywood horror films. Perhaps the day Bollywood gets over their fixation and their complete infatuation with aping the Exorcist, Evil Dead and co will be the day that they will finally produce a truly masterful horror film. There is however one scene which is shockingly similar to the central idea of Ring………a TV flicks mysteriously on by itself - its one of the best scenes of the movie without the jarring music and the overcooked acting and heavy handed direction. On the whole it Raat is a considerable step in the right direction (after Ramsays and Bhakris) even if it suffers from the derivative nature that affects almost all Bollywood horror.