Within a rough one year span, Netflix has once again taken upon itself to bring together four of Bollywood’s most prominent directors since the last time they collaborated on the 2018 anthology, Lust Stories. The makers seemed to have gone either lazy or superstitiously strategic with the title and structure of the series which bear an uncanny resemblance to the 2018 feature film. Ghost Stories, like it’s predecessor, features four separate stories by the four directors, Zoya Akhtar, Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee and Karan Johar, only this time the genre edges on the horror thrills. But one can easily sniff a degree of ineptitude and the fact that Bollywood is yet to perfect the paranormal genre of art.
The first story features a young nurse (Jahnvi Kapoor) who is assigned to take care of a hollow eyed, specter thin old lady (Surekha Sikri) who also suffers from dementia and acute abandonment by her son, whose only presence in the story is his stark absence. The story unfolds in a dim lighted house, with creaky panes and its mistress reciting poems at odd hours. The nurse suffers from her own stint of abandonment as an orphan and a mistress to a married man with who she dreams of getting a house with. The eeriness boils cleverly with the psychological aspect of isolation and dysfunctional relationships, but it falls short of a gasp evoking conclusion. But the execution until then is satisfactory.
The second story is about a pregnant woman (Sobhita Dhulipala) who baby sits her nephew when not busy nursing creepy dolls lying in the crib that awaits the arrival of the real baby. The young child (nephew) seems to suffer acutely from an insecurity that his maasi would love him less once she starts cradling her own baby. He in turn channelizes this angst into his weird drawings of her with the tummy scribbled over angrily. No points for guessing that the drawing has direct voodoo effect on her with shooting pains inside her belly. The story gets more predictable with childhood curses, a nursing crow in the attic, and broken eggs. The dreams somewhat induce the thrill but we grow out of it pretty soon.
The third story directed by Dibakar Banerjee manages to be a saving grace for all the shortcomings you come across through the entirety of the film. The tale is meant to be a socio-political allegory, very much pertinent to the trying times we are living in at the moment. Banerjee sketches quite an intelligble socio-economic hierarchy through an apocalyptic episode of zombie like figures treading in a remote village. He sets up the survival rules where one can escape from the impending doom by agreeing to act like any other man eater, a metaphor cleverly hinting at the verbal submission of anguished tribes of protestors.
Karan Johar doesn’t shy away from being himself while directing the final story of the anthology. He successfully makes a grand, lavish royal wedding with Sabyasachi lehengas and pretty decorations look relevant in a horror based backdrop. But that’s about it. He stirs away from the originality of plotlines sooner than you can guess how the story would end. A young heir of a royal, wealthy family is to be getting married, the only catch being he has major granny issues. Mrunal Thakur in the role of the wife plays her part adequately, which was not much tbh other than being agitated at not reaching climax in bed since her dead granny-in-law pays little regard for privacy by entering her grandsons bedroom on his nuptial night to bid him goodnight. So she in turn curses her with F-words instead of fleeing away from the madhouse at the earliest. Real mature.
If you actually get down to watch the film, it will turn out to not be as unimaginative as its title, but that doesn’t vouch for a lot since the blandness of the latter is unequalled. Although if you are into the horror kinks of creaky noises, worn down houses, old ladies who are either demented or dead or just Mrunal Thakur’s perfect toothed smile, Ghost Stories might just work out for you.