Naina: Spooky, but not original 20th May 2005
21.10 IST
By Nitika Desai
Naina is a promising effort by director Shripal Morakhia. But the originality of the movie’s plot is in doubt because it bears a stark resemblance to Pang Brothers’ Chinese film ‘Jian Gui’.
Starring Urmila Matondkar in the title role, the movie tells the story of a girl who loses her eyesight in an accident at the age of five.
Twenty years later, Naina (Urmila Matondkar) regains her eyesight after a cornea transplant. As she opens her eyes to a world that remained in the dark for her for two decades, Naina discovers to her utter shock that she can see dead people.
It turns out that she is seeing the world through the eyes of a Gujarat village girl named Khemi (the cornea donor) who had strange psychic powers, lived a turbulent life and died in anguish.
Naina’s search for answers takes her from London to Bhuj in Gujarat where the true story of Khemi is revealed to her.
The movie’s director Shripal Morakhia seems to have a good understanding of human fears and he stirs them well with some finely executed sequences like when Naina sees apparitions in the art gallery, in the restaurant, and comes face-to-face with the ‘girl-in-the-mirror’ at the interval point.
The scary moments in the film does send a chill down the spine. And the credit for this goes jointly to Urmila Matondkar (who takes to spooky roles like a fish to water), to Morakhia (for his sensible direction) and to the film’s cinematographer and sound specialists.
However, despite the fact that Naina is packed with scary moments, it cannot be called a milestone in Bollywood horror genre for the simple reason that the film is not original.
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Naina: Spooky, but not original
