Dhund: The Fog (2003) User Reviews

Dhund certainly fogs your senses.

[xpics · 2/10 · 18 June 2006]

Ramsay – the kings of comedy (or was it horror, whatever) wake after years of hibernation. And yes, I did get scared. No not because of the horror element (of course I am not that squeamish) but because rats were constantly dancing on my feet in the khatmal-chaap theatre (where else do such movies run).

So check the plot. A man is repeatedly stabbed, choked to death, stuffed in plastic and dumped in a pool. But he still returns to take revenge. Now was the film a thriller or a horror? That itself is the suspense for you to discover. And the end turns out to be another mask mystery. Remember those trademark Ramsay undercover agents – men wearing some stupid horror masks. Only here the mask is of a human. I suppose, no more detailing is required to skip this flick.

Amarr Upadhyay tends to get over-dramatic and theatrical, forgetting the difference between cinema and TV soaps. A cheaply and skimpily dressed Aditi Gowitrikar in her typical pink lipstick looks like ….. (Uh! you know what).

The background score is a straight lift from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Not a single department of the film, whether technical or creative, is worth commenting. Novelty lacks both in story and execution.

Dhund certainly fogs your senses.

Confused-The Musical

[KitsunegariBlu · 3/10 · 5 February 2006]

When I think Bollywood. I think of lite feel good musical dance numbers, with gorgeous outfits on the men and women. And catchy tunes. Horror, Thrillers, Mystery and Suspense, don't come to mind though. And this, to my Western eyes, is like an abstract comedy.

I think it would have been a better movie, shorter even, if the writer and the director had made a definite choice. Either gone for outright Thriller-Horror, Comedy-Mystery, Supernatural-Suspense or Musical-Romance, instead of an awkward mixture of them all.

I'll have to say more than once I thought the director must have seen "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and tried to give it a Bollywood twist. My first film was Bride & Prejudice. Which I thought was acted well.

This seemed like what a Western Audience would consider a straight to video cheese fest.

The acting was over the top, at times it felt like they were intentionally trying to parody western thrillers, but when you saw them try to inject the dramatic crying, screaming or fear, it felt out of place.

The viewer was left wondering when one of the actors would wink at the camera. More than a few times when the audience was supposed to be horrified, we could only snicker a the absurdity.

I watch a lot of foreign films, and even though I don't know Hindi, I have to say they did a poor job subtitling the film. Sometimes it was difficult to read the white lettering against the bright background.

The villain was particularly amusing, at least to me, because he came with his own mood music. The supposed surprising twist, actually felt like a cop out.

The lead couples were handsome/pretty enough, and the musical numbers made it worth my rental fee. I'd suggest it to someone as a musical- comedy, but I'd tell them to just fast forward the rest of the movie, because it wasn't worth the effort of reading. If you're determined to read a whole subtitled Hindi flick, then check out the superior Romantic Drama 'Namasteay, London'.

But I was not scared..unless that's really what they think is horrifying in India. 1 out of 10 for what it's being touted as. 6 out of 10 for it's unintentional quickness & ability to illicit lots of laughs, and it's musical/dance numbers. Enjoy :)

A Hot Mess!

[Sherazade · 1/10 · 29 April 2006]

To call this film a disaster will be an understatement. I don't even know where to begin! I have questions though, and lots of them. I would like to know who conceived of this script? Who gave them money to make this film? Who was in charge of casting and costuming? They should all be sued! I saw this film in my local library's catalog and I thought "Hey! great!" I had just seen the two FOG movies that Hollywood had produced and then realised that Bollywood had a version. Unbeknowst to me, that it would turn out to be a total and utter crap-fest!

Dhund - the fog, is a film about four friends (actually just one of them but you should know that there are four friends), one of them is a beauty queen (played by India's 1st Mrs. World, Aditi Govitrikar) and the director spares no expense at letting you know this. The script even claims that she (the character's name is Simran) has Aishwarya Rai eyes, Kareena Kapoor lips and Rani Mukherjee hair. Feel free to barf if you want to, at least at this point you haven't seen the film, unlike poor me. :*(

Anyway, Simran receives a death threat one day from one of the contestants' uncle, who tells her to drop out of the contest so that his niece would have a better chance of winning, but Simran's boyfriend doesn't allow her to do this and thus she participates in the pageant and wins. This causes the crack-cocaine-sniffing uncle of her former college classmate Tanya to come after her. But with the help of her cousin Kajal, Simran drowns the culprit and they enlist both their boyfriends in the task of getting rid of the body. It's tough but they eventually get around to doing it.

In a scene that borrows from Hollywood's film Diabolique, the pool where the dead body is hidden is drained only to reveal that the body is missing and this begins a conundrum of Whodunit and Where-is-it? By the time the film is over, the film successful steals scenes from 'I know what you did last summer, I still know, Scream 1, Scream 2, Scream 3, Murder she wrote episodes and not to mention, Columbo and Scooby Doo'! Shameless, I tell ya!

Inconsistencies and problems within the film include but are not limited to:

1. A scantily clad Simran answers phone-calls three times from her would-be-killer, the camera shows her drop the phone off the hook yet the phone is able to ring again each time and she picks it up to answer.

2. Tanya tries to kill herself because she doesn't win the beauty contest? WTF? Even Aishwarya Rai who is ten time more beautiful did not attempt suicide when she didn't win Miss India!

3. In the pool scene, the kids who come to retrieve the ball that has fallen into the pool conveniently disappear as soon as the police arrive. And the ball disappears too.

4. The cliché blue contacts lenses of the killer change from blue to brown in the drowning scene, yet when his corpse surfaces again, his eyes are blue.

5. Nobody who dies in the film is mourned (strange, especially for Indian society).

6. When Vikram jumps into the dirty murky pool, an underwater camera shows us his actions and miraculously the pool is transformed to Olympic size and is clean and clear as day.

7. Sexy belly-dancer performs a pseudo-orgasm drenched song and dance number about coming of age. That would have been cool for some bachelor party, but they were celebrating Simran's pageant win! Hello!!!!

8. Kunal, Sameer, Simran and Kajal can neither dance nor Lip Synch properly. But don't blame them, just accept that there was no choreographer for the dance numbers.

9. Nothing within the film was choreographed, it was like they just told the actors to show up and do whatever the want.

10. The film played out like there was no script. Either that or the director was high and drunk when filming this junk!

11. When Simran's picture was published without her consent in a magazine, she flew to the police headquarters to have the photographers arrested, yet she receives death threats and never bothers to alert the police.

Just to mention a few of course. This film was a painful experience for me and I advise everyone to skip it by all means necessary and possible. Bollywood should be terribly ashamed of this kind of film-making.

So sad

[kfadich · 13 August 2003]

I watched this film hoping for a really good thriller. Sadly, that was not what I saw. What I saw was three hours of loosely edited material that tried too hard to be a thriller. Much of the film just tried too hard. The actors tried too hard, the music, and the direction. It is very similar to "I Know What You Did Last Summer" at least at the core. I would not recommend this film, except to recommend that they stay away.

Dhund - The Foggy Bottoms

[shahkaal · 10/10 · 13 April 2007]

The scariest family in Indian Horror returns to the big screen with a chilling chiller to chill your inner child - all achieved with only 4 of the 9 Ramsay family members.

While enchanting in its childlike innocence, the film clearly suffers from brother Keshu's steadying hand and the benevolent supervision of their late father - the genius F.U.Ramsay. The film continues to improve on Hollywood hacks like Diabolique, Scream, I know what you did last summer, and pays musical tributes to Ennio Moricone, Pink Panther, etc. Prem Chopra and Gulshan Grover give their best performances in months - their performances and the film won 8 Azghars - the coveted Indian Oscars.

This film should be required watching for the so-called Masters of Horror - Argento, Carpenter, Gordon, Romero, watch this film and ponder your work. If you dare, Shahkaal recommends the best of the early Ramsay triumphs - Do Gaz Zameen ke Neeche, Andhera, Darwaza, Aur Kaun, Dahshat, Hotel, Guesthouse, Saboot, Purana Mandir, Tehkhana, Veerana.

Very Absurdist Comedy! Very Disturbed! I Recommend it at least once!

[sheryldotrock · 6/10 · 28 January 2006]

I actually enjoyed many of the musical sequences such as the celebration song and dance in Ch.14 "Mein Albeli..." Those girls kicked butt! Great choreography! (what's with the pantyhose lines?) I'd go for just a slight costume re-design but it is cute nonetheless. Sleeker undergarments, sheer-to-waist pantyhose, etc... This movie is so confused~if you watch it with English subtitles, sometimes they say a sentence in English, otherwise it's mostly Hindu so it makes it odd and kind of "disconcertingly, humorously, absurd"~ : p when they do. I also think 2 & 1/2 hours (plus 3 min.) is a bit much but, I can't conceive what should be cut w/o changing its "comedic absurdist" elements.

Surprisingly Awesome

[starstuckmistress · 8/10 · 10 January 2006]

I rented this movie with my friends originally thinking it was the '85 Fog. I was very wrong. I read on the back when we put it in that it was Bollywood, but I thought, no way is there singing! It's a thriller! There is indeed singing. The first time I watched it I was watching it for the absurdity of a scary movie that was a musical. Crazy bad acting showed up once and a while, like when some characters get hit, they spiral out of control, hit things, and keep spinning. There were also cases of sound effects that didn't match the action. The plot may have been a little sketchy, but I found it very hard to get bored. The second time I watched it I saw it for what it was supposed to be. I wasn't scared like I think I was supposed to be, but I appreciated the humor that was meant to be humorous, and even trying to sing along as best I could. This is a movie that is worth watching at least once: good music, random song and dance, crazy plot, and awesome characters!

Worst horror film

[silvan-desouza · 10 September 2011]

Ramsay Brothers made several good supernatural films like SAAMRI and PURANA MANDIR in 80s but there got stuck with their same formula till 2000 post and hence made their films outdated

DHUND is a comical take on I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, SCREAM.etc and makes KUCCH TO HAI seem a better film Somehow IKWUDLS inspired several films in 2003 like KUCCH TO HAI and SSSHHHH and got irritating

DHUND is a comical film for it's stars which contains the heartthrob of TV Serials Amar Upadyay who made a terrible debut here, He was overweight and plus did such overacting that makes the statement that TV actors make lousy actors on big screen seem believable

The film follows the same formula of horror films and has several hilarious scenes which make you cry, In the end it's suddenly exposed that the real villain was someone else and the reasons and the subsequent scene makes you cry

Direction by Ramsay is terrible Music is terrible SFX is terrible

Amongst actors Irrfan Khan the best actor of the lot is wasted but does a good job Amar Upadyay is terrible and should stick to small screen, sadly he disappeared from there too and could never meet the success of the small screen too which he was at peak before he left for films Appoorva is alright, He too moved to small screen with JASSI JAISI KOI NAHIN in the same year Divya Palat and Aditi are terrible Gulshan Grover and Prem Chopra are usual Mukesh Tiwari is wasted

Awfully bad!

[jahangirhussain74 · 1 September 2012]

Dhund-The Fog is a really bad take off on the Hollywood horror flick I Know What You Did Last Summer. Nothing about the film works in its favor. The weak screenplay coupled with some lousy acting from the lead actors are to blame.

The story revolves around a group of friends: Sameer (newcomer Amar Upadhyay), Simran (Aditi Govitrikar), Kunal (Apoorva Agnihotri) and Kajal (Divya Palat). Simran always wins at a beauty contest and this lands her in a soup as a contestant Tanya's (Shweta Menon) brother, Ajit (Irrfan Khan) tells her not to participate in the contest as he wants his sister to win. If she participates in the contest, then he's kill her. But she ignores the warning of the mentally retarded brother and takes part in the contest and wins. Tanya decides to kill herself after losing the contest but her brother thwarts her moves. He swears revenge on Simran and goes to her house to kill her. But he gets killed instead. A frightened Simran along with her friends decides to get rid of his body by throwing it on a railway track to make his death look like a suicide. However, the dead man rises from his grave and starts extracting his ultimate revenge.

The performances are really bad. The four lead actors look confused and sleepwalked throughout the film. The worst actor among them is definitely Aditi Govitrikar. She hams incessantly and screams and yells. Divya Palat looks lost in front of camera. Apoorva Agnihotri does show his spark in the climax but at that time, he could really do nothing to save the film. Amar Upadhyay is one of the worst actors to be seen in Bollywood after a long time. Maybe he should get back to small screen. The only actor who puts his best effort in the film is Irrfan Khan. He does look scary and his looks are at par with his crazy, kinky role. Irrfan shows he can really go a long way in Bollywood. Prem Chopra and Gulshan Grover are just okay. Shweta Menon has a 15 minute-ish role.

It seems the director Shyam Ramsay created a rough draft but forgot to put his finishing touches on it. The weak screenplay is his biggest undoing. The editing is slow and the pace drops in the second half, making the movie a torture for the viewer.

I've never seen a film where the actors look so disinterested in the proceedings and are just there for the sake of being paid.

Like its title, Dhund-The Fog disappears in the fog once the film is over.

Avoid!!!