Dhund; The Fog (2003)

Much excitement surrounded the release of Dhund – The Fog as seen as the Ramsay Brothers’ return. Touted as “The Ramsay’s comeback”, the film is in actuality not a Ramsay production and doesn’t bear the famous “Ramsay Films” banner at all. The only connection is that Shyam Ramsay has been roped in to direct this mystery-horror-thriller, and for most of us Bollywood Horror buffs – one Ramsay is better than no Ramsay.

Once the disappointment of the film not bearing the official Ramsay “stamp of quality” was drowned with a couple of stiff Malted Vanilla Shakes, the lights were dimmed, and the much-anticipated chiller was bunged into the DVD player. The opening scene is of a wealthy-looking drunken thakur-type arriving at a bizarre warehouse full of mannequins. The man douses the place with petrol before setting it ablaze, but as he does this, he is attacked by a shadowy figure that proceeds to strangle him to death. The strangler manages to flee into darkness as flames consume the warehouse.

The next half hour of Dhund – The Fog is devoted to building a romance between a foursome of typically brainless teenagers. The two lads are advertising film hot-shots on the lookout for potential models they find in the form of two bimbettes played with appropriate airheadedness by new girl Aditi Govitrikar recently crowned Miss Universe and her sidekick. With the obligatory MTV style song and dance sessions, the film now begins to develop most intriguingly. A beauty pageant is announced, and Simrin (Real-life Miss Universe) has always won every contest she has entered (much to the disgust of childhood school archrival and fellow beauty contestant).

Her Shahrukh Khan look-alike brother (Irfan) with a bad haircut decides to take matters into his own hands and comforts his bratty sister by promising her that this time victory will surely be hers. The evil brother takes to calling up Simrin and delivering dire warnings of doom to her if she goes ahead and contests the Pageant. First he tells her he will simply kill her if she competes but later that threat is changed to a milder one – disfigurement of her beautiful face with a vial of fresh acid! The sullen rival beauty withdraws from the Pageant, knowing that yet again, she will end up with the wooden spoon while Simrin will stroll off with the laurels, as always.

Thus, the film’s entire plot is built upon this bitchy rivalry based on the local beauty pageant scene – rather exciting and novel for a Bollywood horror flick. Simrin holds firm, buoyed on by her friends and “chamchas” she goes on to romp to victory at the beauty pageant reducing her rival to the depths of despair – she tries to shoot herself but is saved in the nick of time by her demented brother who thereafter swears to “fix things” so that she never loses another beauty contest ever again!

And so the deranged psychotic brother decides to carry out his vengeance for little sister’s humiliation but ends up having the tables turned on him by Simrin and her friend, who cut the fellow to ribbons and leave him for dead in a pool of blood. The boyfriends arrive to find their girls in a tizzy, and in the I Know What You Did Last Summer tradition, the four of them decide to hide the body and carry on as usual. Then the film follows the Diabolique path as the corpse is tied up and left to sink at the bottom of a filthy, unused swimming pool. Yet, all of us watching know that it’s only a matter of time before the corpse disappears and starts showing up at most inopportune moments after that.

And so, the humiliated beauty’s brother emerges from the pool to terrorize the four teenagers with a sharp rake-like instrument he has acquired from the bottom of the pool, no doubt.

The film proceeds from one highly improbable situation until finally, the revelation arrives, which is unfortunately wholly unsatisfying. Poor old Prem Chopra is hacked to pieces in a shopping mall as the killer goes on the rampage to exact his revenge for his ugly sister and his own “murder”.

The audience is left scratching their heads, wondering who this figure is and how he could rise up again, having been horribly killed by the girls’ just days ago. The audience is supposed to reel in shock as we discover who the shadowy killer is – a ludicrous, totally far-fetched and contrived twist that is as ridiculous as it is unconvincing.
Dhund – The Fog is a “time-pass” effort at best and shows little of the “style” and production values and indeed atmosphere that one associate with a Ramsay production, which of course, this film isn’t.

However, despite plot holes the size of Texas and a complete disregard for logic, the film is mildly entertaining and fairly slickly produced. Alas, there isn’t enough horror to satisfy genre fans, and the deranged killer brother of the wannabe beauty queen isn’t sinister or threatening enough to frighten. His hairstyle is pretty scary, but otherwise, he looks like Shahrukh Khan’s ugly brother and overacts just as much. The lead foursome is suitably dumb as horror movie fodder tends to be.

The bombshell Miss Universe introduced in this movie is attractive but has an awfully long way to go before she can start dreaming of becoming the next Ashwaria Rai. Good to see veterans Prem Chopra and Tom Alter still going strong.

Dhund – The Fog is not all bad, it is mildly entertaining now and then, but the storyline is so hopelessly silly and contrived that it doesn’t do the trick as a horror film nor as a nail-biting thriller. Yet after watching the likes of Khooni Dracula, Maut and Bhayanak Panja of late, this comes across as a polished, sophisticated thriller with a touch of class (excuse me while I fall off my chair laughing – again!).