Audience gets gaslighted Cast: Sara Ali Khan, Chitrangada Singh, Vikrant Massey, Akshay Oberoi, Shishir Sharma, Shataf Fiqar Rating: 2...
Audience gets gaslighted
Cast: Sara Ali Khan, Chitrangada Singh, Vikrant
Massey, Akshay Oberoi, Shishir Sharma,
Shataf Fiqar
Rating: 2.5*
Streaming on: Disney Plus Hotstar
A sprawling royal palace with mysterious nooks and crannies, a piano that plays by itself, appearing and disappearing bodies, ghostly apparitions, and unexplained events…. Gaslight sure has all this and more to keep your attention hooked but leaves you high and dry barely 20 minutes into the film.
An unofficial remake of the 1961 classic
British thriller Taste of Fear with a stellar star cast of Susan Strasberg, Ann
Todd, and Christopher Lee, Pavan Kirpalani’s attempt at an Indian gothic thriller
falls far short of the original and is mediocre compared to his earlier directorial
efforts Ragini MMS and Phobia.
The film revolves around Princess Meesha’s (Sara)
return to her family palace after 15 years to mend her broken ties with her
father (Shataf) only to find him missing. Now a paraplegic Meesha is not too
thrilled to bond with her stepmom Rukmini (Chitrangada) but finds a kindred
spirit in Kapil (Vikrant) the family chauffeur. As she wheels herself around
the estate she begins seeing apparitions and nearly gets killed during one of
her nocturnal adventures. Increasingly aware that she is being gaslighted into
thinking she’s going insane, Meesha takes it upon herself to find out where her
father is. Even as she seeks to uncover the truth she has to contend with an
unknown enemy.
The problem with Gaslight is the treatment and
the underutilization of the talent Kirpalani had at his disposal. Gothic thrillers
demand an interplay of light and darkness, but here in crucial scenes the screen
appears to go blank with only disjointed sounds and dialogues making a feeble attempt
to move the story forward.
Sara Ali Khan still has a long way to go in
emoting but in the right hands she is sure to flower and those hands are certainly
not Kripalanis. Vikrant Massey is a brilliant actor and to be honest his is the
only character with varied shades and the actor does full justice to the part
given to him, but that alone cannot help Gaslight. Chitrangada shines as the
sultry innocent-wicked stepmom and looks like a million bucks. Akshay Oberoi
leaves a mark as the nasty cousin Rana Jai Singh in the limited screentime allotted
to him.
If you are in the mood for some jump scares
go for Gaslight but be prepared for those promising scares to go flat. Even the
twist, in the end, won’t leave you too surprised.
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