Film in a film, a concept done to death by Bollywood, comes back with 'Agyaat'. A bunch of people, approximately nine of them, pack their bags to shoot for a movie in the dense forests. It must have been a real low budget movie they set out to make as there is just one cameraman, one stunt guy, one hero, one heroine, one director, two assistant directors and a producer (and for a strange reason no make up person or hairstylist for the heroine but an assistant for the starry and arrogant hero). Anyways, they all head to shoot in the natural habitat and finally reach a jungle which has one inhabitant, who is now the unit's guide. As fate has it, the camera is down for a couple of days and to while away time, the group, looking for some adventure, goes into the dense forest for having fun at the pretext of their guide. What follows is the sequential death of the crew one by one in a mysterious manner.
Priyanka Kothari plays Aasha, a filmstar (and irritates you to the core by calling Sharman, Bhaiyya a zillion times on purpose) who is cast opposite Gautam Rode aka Sharman Kapoor, the Tantrum King; hyper, angry young man Ishteyak plays Laxman and is at the receiving end from his beefcake muscle guy Sharman; Harvey Rosemeyer plays JJ, the creative film director and Nitin Kumar Reddy plays Sujal his assistant; And Joy Fernandes is the stone faced Setu, the official forest guide. Amidst the jungle there are two tracks going on at the same time, one is a love square between Priyanka, Nitin, Gautam and Rasika (Sameera) and one which has ego clashes between the starry head Gautam and the rest (especially the stunt guy Rakka, played by Ravi Kale, who eventually kills Gautam). As if the tension of solving the mystery of the unknown killer isn't enough for the audience that Ram Gopal Verma plays the track of the love stories and nagging fights between people side by side.
The songs seem to be just thrust into the movie meaninglessly, and there is also a remake of the popular song 'kahi deep jale kahi dil' in the most tasteless manner. So is the scene where brave girl Priyanka prefers to work out in an unknown jungle in a skimpy skirt and top, the camera almost maneuvering over her, sometimes from in between her thighs or at times to her non flat tummy. Cinematographer Surjodeep Ghosh must have had a gala time shooting the entire movie from weird angles. Sometimes panning the camera into oblivion, at times shooting just the feet, zooming in, zooming out and blurring out, in fact he even does at 360 degrees a couple of times. Just a word of caution for those planning to sit too close to the screen, as these images might just make you wanna throw up. Amar Mohile does a good job with the background score as he at times successfully scares you for a second or so but one wonders if the alien, or the unknown sound, resembles that of a car brake, coupled with some technical sounds? Wouldn't it have been easier to just have some wild calls?
Ramu fails to deliver thrills and the film looks amateurish. When Setu dies, he is shot from a blurring scene, making it quite unclear to the viewer about his fate, though there is a relief from the audience after his death as Setu's dead expressions and weird laugh was irritating rather than scary, and he was definitely not bearable more than that in the movie. Whilst JJ's death looked like a foggy, bubbly scene from the eyes of a 'Predator', where he is lifted by this unknown power into the sky and then killed mysteriously.
The direction has too many glitches and the plot has loopholes. The 'trying to be different and unusual' does not work as the story is so predictable that you almost know that the only people to survive would be Priyanka and Nitin. In one scene during the climax Ramu almost reveals the so called 'Agyaat' when it follows the lead actor from underground with leaves crackling all over it, reminding you of 'Tremors', the Hollywood movie, but Ramu leaves it at that, making you wonder that probably he himself did not quite have a description of the 'Agyaat' to be able to create one, so it was better for him not to exercise his creativity and let the 'Agyaat' remain unknown. The waterfall scene is the funniest as the body double used for Priyanka Kothari is a man in a wig, and it is quite hilarious that you just do not seem to realize when the couple fall from the dreaded 30 feet odd waterfall to a safe place in the lake, unscathed, all within a blink of the eye. Needless to say, all the actors had good scope of over acting and making it all look like a spoof rather than a spook. All in, all Ramu fails to deliver or should we say is successful in making another laughable film, maybe he should rent more Hollywood DVDs. Watch 'Is Jungle Se Mujhe Bachao' instead at home, it is scarier and less amusing.
