Takes you high, then leaves you dry

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Ragini MMS opens with rousing, breathless chanting of the Hanuman Chalisa and swiftly gets your pulse rate going. By the time the credits end and you are knocking at Ragini’s door (the film’s first scene), you are already in the mood — excited apprehension.

A neat trick, this. Tricks, in fact, are the stilts on which this Ekta Kapoor product rests. There’s the trick of the naughty title; the trick of stealing ideas and technique from The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, even Balaji’s own LSD; the trick of adding soft porn to excite a mediocre horror film; and, finally, the trick of drip-drip PR. Ektaji first announced that her film’s story is based on a real-life incident, then, a cute Delhi girl (allegedly the real Ragini) threatened to sue if she wasn’t shown the film before its release. She was not shown the film and there is no court case yet, a la Haji Mastan’s family drama before the release of Ektaji’s Once Upon a Time in Mumbai. The less confident Ektaji is of her film, the louder the hype, it seems.
But like you, I too am allergic to hype.
So, Ragini MMS. The first half of debutant director Pawan Kripalani’s Ragini MMS is worthy of the hype. It's top-half is so sleazy, so gripping, so scary that even if your bladder is bursting you won’t be able to get up and go. The second half, well, let’s say that you can go for the big job, and take your time while you are at it.
Ragini MMS’ basic storyline is fairly commonplace in the horror genre. Boy and girl go for a dirty weekend, are joined by friends, all get trapped in a haunted house and are killed. Only one lives to tell the tale. Which one? Like in all horror/slasher films, the lily-white virgin. She is chastened and returned.
This story gets some bite from a healthy dose of smut and scares. Boy, Uday Jhala (Raj Kumar Yadav), arrives with his hand-held camera and hustles his girlfriend Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) to get ready and leave for their dirty weekend. He talks to her through his video-camera, so we hear him and watch her. She picks up biscuits, he buys condoms, and they set off. The plan is to spend the weekend at a bungalow where, unknown to her, he plans to shoot a dirty video. That’s his route to landing some film roles. The bungalow has been readied by one Panditji whom we don’t meet but learn that he was keen on Ragini because she’s gorgeous, masoom and willing to put out.
Ragini adores Uday though he is rather brusque with her. She is an English-speaking, soft-spoken south Mumbai, girl; he is crude, and clearly not bred in her neighbourhood.
They arrive at the bungalow. He gets the bijli going and figures that the two-storeyed bungalow is covered by an impressive CCTV network. Our vision improves. Now we see both of them, through Uday’s hand-held and Panditji’s hidden cameras.
They start making out. While they are struggling with belt buckles, our attention is diverted by a bloating polythene bag. There is someone in the house, we figure. We know, they don’t, so we fear for them.
But Uday and Ragini are busy — smooching, grabbing, caressing, and so are we, the excited, guilty voyeurs, looking at them through strange and intimate camera angles.
This adult action is interrupted by Ragini’s friend Pia and her boyfriend Vishal. Pia is slutty, doesn't care for Uday, whom she calls "thoku master". Uday has ant in his pants about shooting the video and wants them to leave. They do, but only after Vishal tells Uday the story about this house — a Marathi woman was killed here by her family because they said she was a churail. She then killed her entire family — and Pia does a sexy number that annoys the resident aatma a great deal.
We begin to catch glimpses — hazy, vaporous bits of an apparition.
Uday and Ragini haven't an inkling, so they rush to the first-floor bedroom to resume petting. There's some dirty talk — “Show no. Dikha na” and then Uday decides to handcuff Ragini to the four-poster bed. While he is exploring her slender frame and she is giggling, he says in Marathi, “Main churail nahin hoon”. We see a lady in the mirror.
Telling you more would kill the fun. Suffice to say that phones are out, the key to the pink furry handcuffs can’t be found, there’s a lot of Marathi-talk, twisting, screaming, jerking and the rotten ones are all punished before we reach a rather vague end.
Ragini MMS’ first half is full of exciting action. We are busy figuring out the characters through their actions, keeping one eye on the aatma and one on the sexy goings-on. We want bad boy Uday to be punished, and the girl’s izzat safeguarded, but we are also hooked by guilty pleasure.
After the interval, with the first murder, the film drops several notches. And then there is dizzy night-time hand-held action, confusion about which camera we are looking through, what’s happening, who is dead.
But a fair amount of attention was given to Uday’s character and he is very interesting. He cares for Ragini, but loves himself more. Raj Kumar Yadav, last seen in LSD making an MMS and succeeding, has gotten way better. His dialogue delivery is exceptional and if he had stayed on longer, the film would have been better. Kainaz Motivala is good too, and pretty, but she lacks Yadav’s brilliance.