Trust Vicky Kaushal to render perfection in whatever job he undertakes in his chosen profession. The National award winner (Uri: The Surgical Strike) is aptly cast as the one, while grieving a personal loss, has a job at hand to unravel the mystery of an abandoned ship in the shores of Mumbai.
Prithvi (Vicky) entrusted with the job of setting the ship in order, along with his colleague Riaz (tidy job by Akash Dhar) has to battle his own demon while witnessing the hauntings in the ship. Riaz sees none of it and chides Prithvi for his hallucinating prowess.
Haunted by his dreary past where he loses his beloved (Bhumi Pednekar in a guest role) and child in a rafting mishap, Prithvi has to live with the reality of bringing to light the factors behind the disappearance of a teenaged girl. He is in the dark and so are the viewers as to why the members of the crew jump at the sea to end their lives.
Aided a great deal by the cinematography of Pushkar Singh gelling well with the background score of Akhil Sachdeva, the movie sets a good pace, stays that way for the best part. The jump scares are one too many to unsettle the audience which is somehow balanced by the computer graphics. Evidently, thrust had been on the build-up to the plot, which debutant director Bhanu Pratap Singh does with a lively introduction scene.
If that sets the mood early on, the set-up pieces in the form of professor (Ashutosh Rana) play the spoilsport unwittingly. His poorly etched character stands like a sore thumb in the otherwise well-executed cliched plot which could easily be read between the lines. The eerie effects are amiss, so vital in a movie of such genre, where the audience has to be enveloped with fear. Only the supernatural elements do not carry the powers to rung in the alarms.
Vicky Kaushal, as usual, is at the top of his game – he lets the audience in on the palpable fear he experiences aided by some brilliant cinematography work. We almost feel the guilt he undergoes in not being able to come to the aid of his wife and kid.
Though not fair to compare with the earlier one of Ram Gopal Varma, which set new benchmarks for the horror genre, director Bhanu has stuck to the basics faithfully. In bringing out the feelings of a loner, still to overcome the guilt of an unsavoury past, Bhanu is in home territory, with the promise of a better outing in his next.
There is the promise of an inevitable sequel. For sure, Vicky will have his hands full to do the rescue act again.