Mallika

If you are tired of seeing the same menu of spooks, boo moments and predictable scary twists in films, Mallika does not promise to cheer you up. To make a horror movie is a tricky subject, which involves a clever script and it is much more than grotesque faces, dead people on ceilings and ghosts in white.

With the heroine literally yelling, screaming and shouting every moment, one cannot help feeling sorry for themselves and start longing for a good pair of earplugs. Sanjana (Sheena Nayyar), the heroine, has an unusual talent of being able to see the traumatic past and mishaps faced by the previous inhabitants of the house.

When she starts seeing a women being strangled in her dreams and is constantly troubled by nightmares, Sanjana decides to run away from it all. However, the choice of a secluded, eerie fort-cum-resort in Rajasthan does not sound like a good choice and here more trouble starts...

The movie then pushes into flashback mode which tells the story of a woman called 'Mallika' who was cheated by her husband and is burnt alive followed by being buried under the fort. To take her revenge, Mallika's ghost rises and targets random people by scaring them... Apparently, Sanjana is the exact replica of Mallika which sounds like a cliched funda used in every average horror movie.

Now how many times have we heard this story? The careless, white peeling make-up of the ghosts, hanging from ceiling or prowling in the castle fails to scare you. Along with the heroine Sanjana, an assortment of characters live in and around the castle - Saahil (Sameer Dattani), who does research on Fort, Vikram (Himanshu Malik) who is the caretaker of the Fort, Police inspector (Suresh Menon).

Debutante Sheena Nayyar tries her best, but obviously it is not her fault as the movie fails to engage the viewer attributing to the poor script and storyline. Sameer Dattani as Sahil tries to hold the show whiles everything else around him is collapsing like a house of bricks in this not-so-great flick "Mallika".

Overall, "Mallika" is a thanda affair, which will put you to sleep rather than scare...