Murdaa (2000)

Tubby college girl Rekha finds herself plagued by a persistent stalker who follows her day and night, periodically showering her with roses and declarations of undying love. Fortunately she happens to be engaged to an impossibly earnest police officer who ought, in theory at least, to be capable of protecting her from anything untoward.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work out that way.

Rekha receives the shock of her life when the stalker, Ranjeet, calmly informs her that he is responsible for littering the city with the corpses of young lovers in a manner not unlike a bargain-basement Son of Sam. He explains that every murder has been committed in her honour.

Flattered by the devotion if somewhat disturbed by the body count, Rekha devises a trap and has the fellow arrested.

Alas, her father, who happens to be the prosecuting lawyer, proves utterly useless.

Rather than being convicted for a string of grisly murders, Ranjeet is declared mentally unstable and shipped off to a psychiatric institution.

With their troubles apparently behind them, Rekha and her amorous college friends head off to a remote forest camp house to celebrate.

This turns out to be a serious miscalculation.

It takes Ranjeet approximately five minutes to escape from the hospital and arrive at the camp house where the festivities are already underway.

Confronting a scantily clad Rekha, he swears vengeance for her betrayal. She rejects him yet again and, in a display of collective stupidity that deserves recognition, her friends proceed to beat him so savagely that he dies on the spot.

Or so they think.

The group nervously dispose of the body and swear never to reveal what happened.

Naturally, mysterious events begin almost immediately.

One stormy evening Rekha discovers her bedding being mysteriously removed before her nightgown nearly suffers the same fate at the hands of a floating red rose apparently carried by an invisible admirer. There are distinct shades of Hollow Man at work here.

The similarities continue when Ranjeet’s unseen spirit begins making romantic advances towards a surprisingly receptive Rekha.

There follows a particularly sleazy sequence involving a rubber witch’s mask, much writhing, and enough dubious imagery to make even seasoned Bollywood horror fans shift uncomfortably in their seats.

Soon the body count begins to rise.

Ranjeet’s spirit starts appearing with alarming regularity and dispatches Rekha’s friends one by one. His preferred method is simple but effective. He corners his victims before disembowelling them with three devastating swipes from his claw-like hand.

The director’s cinematic influences are hardly subtle.

There are scenes lifted from Scream, nods to I Know What You Did Last Summer, moments that owe a clear debt to A Nightmare on Elm Street and enough borrowed ideas to fill a small video rental store.

Still, some of the results are undeniably entertaining.

The standout sequence arrives when one of the girls suddenly becomes possessed and is hoisted into the air by a steel hook and an astonishingly visible wire. The sheer audacity of the effect deserves admiration. Not only does the unfortunate victim levitate, she proceeds to spin around in circles while dangling in plain sight.

The wire has to be seen to be believed.

There is also a memorable swimming pool sequence in which a rather substantial young lady is attacked by an unseen force from below. The scene relies almost entirely on the actress convincing the audience that something dreadful is occurring beneath the surface.

The results are extraordinary.

As matters spiral out of control and Rekha appears destined to become Ranjeet’s eternal companion in the afterlife, the survivors finally decide to seek assistance from a local tantrik.

What took them so long is anybody’s guess.

The nattily dressed occult expert, although considerably slimmer than tradition demands, takes on the murderous spirit in the obligatory climactic showdown. Mystical incantations are exchanged, supernatural powers unleashed and all manner of chaos ensues as the battle for Rekha’s soul reaches its conclusion.

Murdaa, which proved a sizeable commercial success, moves along at a surprisingly brisk pace and despite some magnificently rotten acting and a plot that belongs in a padded cell, it remains oddly entertaining.

The film successfully combines the stalker thriller with the traditional vengeful-spirit formula while throwing in the expected quota of sleazy songs and generous displays of flesh along the way. The songs themselves are reasonably catchy, although the lamentable Shaggy imitation deserves special condemnation.

While mainstream Bollywood was busy throwing fortunes at expensive special effects extravaganzas, Murdaa and films of its ilk quietly continued attracting audiences with considerably cheaper methods.

There is indeed life — or perhaps death — after the Ramsays and the Bhakris.

Though it eventually transpires that Murdaa is really little more than a direct descendant of Bhakri’s earlier Khooni Murdaa, it remains one of the more entertaining examples of late-period Bollywood horror madness.