Aakhri Raat (1999)

Aakhri Raat features Nisha and Naina are two adoring sisters, with the elder Naina looking out for her younger sibling dutifully as there appear to be no parents in sight. They have a happy home, and Naina is about to start her career as a lawyer and is dating a bright up and coming local police inspector.

Naina often chides Nisha for wearing “revealing clothes”, and an often-exasperated sister, trying to express her saucy nature, explains wearily that “she feels comfortable in her jogging outfit” and that she is tired of her sisters’ constant complaints.

Nisha continues in her ways, though and tries to fool her sister by dressing demurely when she leaves home for college, where she heads straight for the changing rooms and, like Wonder Woman, morphs into a sexy nymphet known by a drooling gang of well-connected college thugs as Miss 99. The ogling men wait for her on the same spot every day and fantasize about her in her “jogging clothes” that have various parts of her anatomy jiggling away to their delight.

Unable to remain satisfied by their fantasies alone, the lads now decide to spin a web in which they hope to entangle Nisha and satiate their uncontrollable lust. They recruit a drug-addicted girlfriend to dupe Nisha into attending a “birthday party” where they proceed to spike her drinks with drugs, and she ends up in a drugged-up state as putty in their hands. Soon enough, she is raped by the four men before being thrown into a shallow grave, cold stone dead.

Despairing sister Naina is paid a visit from her sister one thundery night when she appears uncharacteristically in a white Sari, which means she is no longer among the living. Naina is a tad shocked at the visit, and her sister makes two demands of her; firstly, to take her battle to court and avenger her killers and secondly, to allow her to use her body as a vessel to carry out her form of revenge.

Naina battles hard at the court, but corruption and lies win the day, and her sister’s murderers are let off scot-free. Still, it’s not long before Nisha takes possession of her sisters body, and she begins her revenge by trapping the rapists one by one by seduction and then a horrible death. As the body count starts to mount, Naina’s cop boyfriend is concerned that the rumours flying around are about his beloved being one of the prime suspects. He warns the corrupt Minister fathers of the rapists to guard their sons carefully, and one of the ministers seeks the advice of a quack tantric who also warns them of dangers ahead.

One by one, Nisha takes her brutal revenge until finally her soul can rest in peace, and the rapists are given the punishment they always deserved.

Aakhri Raat is yet another of Bollywood’s endless stream of “rape-revenge” horror thrillers which is neither horrifying nor particularly thrilling. Nisha and Naina are played adequately, and the rapists are the typical “minister’s sons” buffoons of the most retarded kind. The most memorable aspect of this dreary film is the energetic performance of Raj Devgan as the cop. His enthusiasm nearly makes up for his atrocious acting and lack of dancing skills but he does emerge from this mess of a movie with honours.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of an otherwise utterly dreary experience is the fact that this film has been released with its start appearing somewhere around three-quarters of the way through proceedings!

Even the YouTube version is the same disaster with the titles appearing when the climax of the film should have been approaching. This has an odd effect on the viewer but doesn’t detract from the film, which is utterly predictable to begin with, but it adds an intriguing twist, if totally by error.

Aakhri Raat is not a horror film at all, not a drop of blood throughout nor even the obligatory rubber masked demons making an appearance. Lowbrow, low budget, low expectations and pretty much as awful as expected. On the positive side, at least the songs were kept to a minimum, and there was no tedious comedy act which is usually a feature of this kind of garbage.