Ragini MMS

A low-budget, low-art film, so canny it leaves you rivetted right till the end

Ragini MMS is lowbrow entertainment that can hook the highbrow. It is an unoriginal, heavily-derived film that is so audience savvy, it is creepy. The film is held together with recorded digital footage, real time colour film, two performers, some visitors and a ghost.  There is just one central location—a bhoot bangla—minor props and elementary special effects. Yet, you are glued to your seat for the duration, and jumpy when you leave.

How does the movie manufacture this result?  For one thing, it uses sex and horror in a ‘crime and punishment’ equation, keying into the middle-class morality of its audience.  The boy and girl have come for a dirty weekend to this abandoned bungalow. Ragini is there just for fun, which is bad enough, but the guy, Uday, is at work. He has gotten hidden cameras installed in the bedroom for his MMS peddler friends. 

The ghost, in contrast, is given a background that is connected to social inequity.  A witch hunt led to her death and so she takes this invasion of her space by non-locals very seriously.  In a master touch, the ghost speaks in Marathi, which is sub-titled into Hindi, turning her immediately from the usual hack in a haunted house to a definitive presence, complete with linguistic identity.

The other innovation is the use of genuine humour in a scary ambience. Raj Kumar Yadav, who plays Uday with great skill, starts off cocky, soon becomes nervous and ends up so terrified that he hangs on to Ragini (Kainaz Motivala) for dear life, pleading with her to protect him. Of course she can’t, because in a sex game earlier, he had locked her to the bed and then, when the ghost got to him, lost the key.

Ragini MMS is a canny low-budget film with little art. But it appeals to a large cross-section.

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