Horror Story

Raghav Dhari's "Horror Story" arrives as yet another entry in Bollywood's increasingly crowded supernatural haunted-house subgenre, and while it borrows liberally from the playbook of films like "1920" and "Bhoot Returns," it struggles to inject genuine scares or meaningful character development into its premise. The film's central concept—a group of friends trapped in a cursed hotel that was built atop an abandoned asylum—has potential, but the execution feels rote and predictable. The performances, particularly from the ensemble cast, lack the nuance needed to make us genuinely invested in their survival; they deliver their dialogue with the mechanical precision of actors reading from a script rather than living through psychological terror. Where directors like Vishal Furia ("Lapata") have managed to wring authentic dread from claustrophobic spaces, Dhari relies too heavily on jump scares and loud sound design, which wear thin by the second act.

The film's technical shortcomings compound its narrative weaknesses. The cinematography attempts to create an oppressive atmosphere within the hotel's corridors, but the lighting choices often feel inconsistent, breaking the immersion we need to surrender to the horror. The supernatural logic governing the haunting—why the ghosts behave as they do, what rules govern their power—remains frustratingly vague, making the late-game plot twists feel unearned rather than inevitable. There's a particularly egregious sequence involving an