The character is anyway not written with depth, but Kunal just adds to it by giving the same expressions throughout. We liked him so much more in Yeh Jawani Hai Deewani. The camera work and editing are pleasing for a horror fanatic, and we can appreciate the director’s vision for the movie. It’s a welcome change from in-your-face horror flicks that thrive on jump scares. Where the movie should have been left open-ended to qualify as a great thriller, it was solved by itself, and merely leaves the creepy lingering that a good horror flick should. Maybe, subtlety is just not an accepted trait in Bollywood.
The film is a genre-bender, which starts off as a horror, moves on to be a supernatural thriller and finally ends up being something entirely different. The journey you embark on with protagonist Vidyut is baffling in every sense of the word. His quest to the mysterious place takes several detours. While some detours are interesting and scary, like the eerie hotel he stops at, other detours don't make much sense. Until the first half, you're with the guy on his weird trip, anxious and a tad excited to know what's next. But the second half gets tedious and you hope that the takeaway is interesting. It's a brave effort on the part of filmmaker Dhwanil Mehta and is more along the lines of Anurag Kashyap's No Smoking. But while No Smoking was a true open-ended puzzler, this one merely teases and provides you with some answers eventually. The set design and cinematography are superlative. The sombre colours and the dark hues lend a sort of morbid character to the entire film and help with the scary parts. Kunaal performs reasonably well in his first serious outing as a person thoroughly confused about the meaning of life. However, his character is written out as rather one-dimensional. We're sure there's more to the actor and would be great to see him in a more complex role. While the philosophical turn the film takes is interesting, it's a tad too metaphysical. A different kind of horror, go for this one if you're interested in a good dose of philosophy with your horror.