Tacky, wanna-be soft porn

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Mallika is a B-grade horror film that really wants to be a soft porn killer-thriller. Sadly, it neither scares nor titillates. It does, however, keep the interest going for a brief while by choosing to tell its story of betrayal, murder, purana qila and aatma in a mildly complicated way.

Sanjana (Sheena Nayar) is regularly haunted by visions of a murder and the murdered lady in her house. She can’t sleep. She screams, sweats, does heavy panting, and yet finds the will and time to pile on ample makeup, slip in and out of low-cut dresses, and paint her long nails to match every outfit.

Anyway, to escape haunting dead lady, Sanjana seeks to vacation in Fort Khejarta , somewhere in a desert. On the way, her SUV breaks down, and one smiling boy Sahil (Sameer Dattani), playing the violin, appears from nowhere. He too is headed the same way, so they hitch a ride. The driver of their ride is attacked and killed by bats. Cops are informed and while a rather idiotic police officer, P.K. Girpade (Suresh Menon), is investigating the crime scene, Sahil pulls out a He-Man type of sword out of the ground. While he is walking towards Sanjana to show her the sword, which has Fort Khajerta engraved on it, a truck passes through him without scratching him. Neither Sanjana nor Sahil pay much notice to this factoid.

At Khejarta, Maya (Pooja Ballutia) and her husband Vikram (Himanshu Malik) welcome Sahil and Sanjana, while Chander the caretaker talks about bhatakti aatma and how he gives them mukti.

Stranger things happen to Sanjana here. She begins to see the past and the future but is unable to piece the scenes together. Gasping and sweating, she and Sahil share some quality time. The other guests at the resort include two ladies with loose morals and a randy photographer. Strange things happen here and soon a skeleton in the fort’s basement comes to life. In showers and bathtubs, Sanjana and the other ladies see stuff and hear screams, all accompanied to a pulsating background score. Sanjana’s visions get more regular, and begin to make some sort of sense. A lady in white is being killed. But who, where, how? The suspense keeps building up as everybody in the fort gets darshan of the troubled aatma.

Finally one guest is killed. Maya too, who was sharing bathtub with randy photographer, is killed. And the murder weapon is the sword. Inspector Girpade is called and the fort’s owner Kaushik is also called to sort out the mess.

As stories of murder and betrayal are revealed, and Vikram is attacked by furniture, the Chander the caretaker says that he will have to do tantra... but the aatma comes and kills many more people. Kaushik, who is really the film’s secret and surprise, finally arrives and makes the last 10-15 minutes of the film worth watching by dying so nicely and properly.

Director Wilson Louis’ Mallika is more silly and confusing than scary. Though the film’s setting is nice, the calibre and quality of its actors is dismal and this adds to the film’s overall sleazy feel and disposition.

The only thing Sheena Nayar has going for her is the husky, almost eerie voice that sometimes talks to us, and her décolletage. Suspense item Kaushik is not bad. Sameer Dattani is useless, as are the rest. But none is bad as Suresh Menon. He has become a pathetic caricature of himself.