Aatma: Movie Review

The film starts off with a promise and a distinct flavor but becomesredundant after a period of time. Aatma is a predictable horror film with an
effort to interlace the story with an emotional bond between a mother and adaughter. The premise of the film is predictable yet effective which skilfully sets the tone of the film.
Starting with a video footage, depicting the eccentric love a father has for a
daughter, the narration is simple and in the flavor of the usual horror films
which is quite acceptable to the audience provided it works well. The effort to
express a tale which has its roots in the emotional relationship of a family is
quite visible and could have been utilized with much better craft and scope. But
over the course of time, the film loses its potential and grows into becoming
another horror tale of a regular kind. Classical approach stands for the wisdom
that whenever a story is told through the lens of human relationships,
irrespective of the genre it is told in, it has to be based properly on the
organic evolution of the story and the major aspects of the film needs to be
explained properly. This is a major flaw, where a lot of plot points are left
unexplained which seriously interferes with the gradual narration.



The director tries hard to provide the right kind of treatment for a story with
an awareness for the compensation on behalf of an original script. The visual
style has a distinct flavor and the cinematography certainly shows potential.
The background score switches between jarring tones and instead of supplementing
the film, it disrupts the natural flow. Although there are few occasions where
there is relatively good use of sound and one intelligent scene depicting a
metaphorical death (school teacher getting killed in front of mirror). On the
acting front, Bipasha delivers a nice performance and there is an obvious
spontaneity in her work. Nawazuddin Siddiqui has few scenes and performs well
with one exceptional sequence (where he is talking in front of the judge).
Audiences won’t find this movie upto the mark and Aatma is quite susceptible to
be called  a staple horror film. There is nothing wrong in making that kind of
horror but the approach has to be clear and defined. There is a lot of confusion
here arising from the effort of arriving at a decision of either trying to make
classical horror or pulp horror.

Verdict: An effort of making an emotional horror film. However, it suffers due

to the lack of an original script.

Shadab Hasnain