Let’s face the dreadful fact. In present times, face horror is unexciting and obsolete and doesn’t appeal even to hardcore fans of the horror genre. Over that the Hindi Filim Shaapit , like most formulaic frightful films, is a horror flick where the tone, tempo and variation of the background score determines the moment of spook.
The ancient premise is basically Purana Mandir in a new bottle. Kaaya (Shweta Agarwal) carries a generational curse as per which any female in their family would die on marriage. That prohibits her from getting married to her love Aman (Aditya Narayan). After sobbing and singing songs on her staircase, Aman decides to fight against the curse to win his love.

Conventional characterizations come up in the form of a standard sidekick friend (Shubh Joshi) who introduces Aman to Professor Pashupathi (Rahul Dev) who knows it all. Together they set out on a ‘soul’ searching journey and end up in long-lost village Dak Bungla where some Ramu kaka character is waiting for them. The girl gets in ‘grave’ trouble and lands in coma. The guys attempt to dig the past.
Absurdly, an electronic item number takes you into flashback mode narrating a raja-rani kahani and through tavees , tantra -mantra and Theban language, the spirit is traced. Finally a zombie emerges to spread havoc and has to be traditionally terminated. Vikram Bhatt’s treatment never goes away from his previous horror flicks like Raaz and 1920 and perhaps, for him, being in his ‘elements’ means switching from ‘fire’ to ‘water’. So while the spirit was set afire in the climax of Raaz , here its ashes has to be immersed in water

To an extent the horror in Shaapit is initiated through its story and Vikram Bhatt and Dhiraj Rattan sketch out an eventful screenplay. Aman’s stint in the library in the first half, Shubh’s time-travel in the past and the professor’s psychometry experiment are riveting experiences. But resorting to regular clichés like the heroine walking in white at midnight, carrying a lamp or the professor getting possessed in the climax dilute the impact. Vikram derives the period setting from 1920 and the contrived conflict of the heroine struggling for life in hospital in the climax is an exact replication of the climax of Raaz . The end of this Bollywood Filim stretched and could have been less exasperating.