An interesting thing happens even before the film starts – the screen shows Manforce condoms as the brand partner which is followed by the Lord Balaji logo of Balaji telefilms. The next two hours that follow are an ironical mix too – brassiere  and balidaan.

The sequel is directed by Bhushan Patel, who thwarts the ‘bhoot’ chanting Hanuman Chalisa. Ragini MMS 2 titles begin with Hanuman Chalisa, and takes off from where the prequel ended.  Ragini is now in a mental asylum being treated for multiple personality syndromes.  Meanwhile a famous director Rocks (Parvin Dabas) plans to make a movie based on the Ragini MMS incident, and decides to shoot it at the same haunted bungalow where the horrifying incident took place three years back.  Rocks picks Sunny (Sunny Leone) to play the role of Ragini. Sunny visits Ragini at the asylum, as part of research to get into the skin of the character, and she witness a weird behavior. The crew reaches the bungalow to carry out the shooting. The rest is obviously all about whom and how does the ‘chudail’ possess and attack sequentially.

Well, sex and horror are the two factors this movie has banked on. The former is taken care well by Leone who has contributed generously to the sexual content of the movie.  When it comes to emoting something, she is a piece of wood. She is as uncomfortable in portraying emotions as much she is comfortable in doing the unnamed lingerie advertisements that keep appearing intermittently in the movie.

Executing the horror part was taken care by the screenplay and the sound effects, succeeding most of the times in scaring the viewer. Few portions remind you of Ramsays, which make it a bit unintentionally funny though.  There is a desi touch given to the script by basing the story on superstitions like balidaan.  The back story was crisp and effective. The flow of the movie is smooth too and doesn’t waste too much time in any sequence.

Coming to the performances, thankfully Sunny sets the acting bar so low that even the artificial performance by Parvin Dabas looked decent. However, the male lead Saahil Prem gives a tough fit to Leone’s acting skills. Sandhya Mridul tries to do a Rakhi Sawant and was ok. The actor who played Maddy was impressive though. The only matured performance is of Divya Dutta who plays a New York returned doctor.  She does it with élan.

However, one thing is for sure that the movie somehow manages to get the attention of the viewer either through sex or horror. Ekta seems to be under the impression that getting under the skin of the character can be unabashedly substituted by showering loads of skin show.  The makers definitely know what the movies’ assets are.

All in all, the sequel just crosses the passing marks balancing horror and sex. And, yes STRICTLY FOR ADULTS!

12 x 1 = 12

12x 2 = 24

..

12 x 10 = 120

When the writer-director Pavan Kriplani memorized this table of 12 in his 3^rd grade, it somehow stayed permanently in the mind. And that came handy when he made ‘Darr @ The Mall’.  The funda is simple – Let the chudail kill one person every 12 minutes, so that by the end of 10^th iteration, we have killed enough and completed 120 minutes too.

The Ragini MMS director has come up with this horror flick, which is purely a template based movie, where the title appears after the first murder, followed by the hero’s entry to the haunted place, followed by the serial deaths of a closed group. Of course, this is all done for a purpose, which is obviously explained by the ghost at the end to our beloved hero.

Following are the chosen elements that fill the template.

Haunted place – Mall

Hero – Jimmy Shergill, who is appointed as a security head (prop: a torch with Eveready batteries)

Closed group – Mall owner; Mall owner’s muse; Mall owner’s daughter; Mall owner’s daughter’s boyfriend; Mall owner’s daughter’s boyfriend’s sister and so on..

Placing the plot in a mall is the only aspect that makes it a tad different than using a haveli, villa or a hill station.  The horror sequences do send shivers down the spine, but only at very few occasions.  The trepidation factor becomes pretty low as the movie progresses. The director introduces the size, structure and strength of the ghost too often and too clearly that expect-the-unexpected moments are zero. Till the penultimate five minutes, though the movie doesn’t have extra-ordinary moments, it maintains dignity by not having ridiculous moments/dialogues. Thanks to the climax scene, it fulfills that requirement too.

There is nothing extra-ordinary about the performances either. This is one of the n bad choices Jimmy has made in his career in picking films.  Arif Zakaria is wasted too. The sound design helped in getting some sequences click well though.  Cinematography was effective in creating the right environment.  The monotonous and predictable plot made the 2 hour movie seem like 3 hours.

The insipid horror of Darr @ the mall tries hard to trigger nature’s call but ends up in inflammation of the eye-ball.