Aagah The Warning Review

What is it all about?

A perfect example of an interestingly high-minded idea going horribly wrong. 'Aagah The Warning' is undeniably confused and a tedious mind screw from Karan Razdan who still after seven years in movie making is struggling to impress as a story teller.

The Story... Of course

A boatman Ramsharan (Karan Razdan) is captured on high seas by the mujahideen. His trawler is taken over. Men working under him are killed. The course of his trawler is altered. Azaan Khan (Atul Kulkarni), who is the leader of the Jihadis, is on a mission to get into India and kill innocent people. A fight takes place whereby Ramsharan is shot dead by Azaan.

Ramsharan's family in the village consisting of his father (Satish Kaushik), mother (Ila Arun), wife (Rituparna Sengupta) and daughter Muskaan (Jannat) grieve the death of Ramsharan. Muskaan has a lot of innocent questions to ask about her father's death. In fact, the concept of death is alien to her.

A spirit begins to haunt Muskaan. The dead are trying to reach out to her. A maulana (Anang Desai) tries to help the family. He introduces them to Peer Jammatuddin Shah Baba (Anupam Kher). A strange thing happens one night. The spirit attacks. It writes something on the wall. Whose spirit is it? What is it trying to say or do?

What to look out for?

If you are a filmmaker or a wannabe then take this film as a guide which clearly makes one point stamped and printed in your head that only having a great idea won't work sirji, it needs to be implemented with a 'spirit' of doing something good and acceptable.

Well the actors Atul Kulkarni, Jannat Zuber, Satish Kaushik and especially Anupam Kher's performances show loyalty and justify their fees by emoting naturally.

Cinematography is fine.

What not?

Karan had a unique idea of combining the deconstructed theology of Jihad amongst the terrorist with the 'spirit' mythology. This high minded idea needed some special knowledge of cinema and an utterly convincing script which could have played with the audience psych either from the terrorist angle or from the 'spirit'' angle. But alas it's a half baked effort resulting in a bizarre thumps down.

On top of that the movie also falls victim to its dull technical support, the spirit is poor videography, the sound too isn't thrilling enough plus the language spoken by Satish Kaushik and Illa Arun in the film, it's a cross between Rajasthani and Gujarati.

Conclusion: Like statutory warning in cigarette packets and liquor bottles, ironically the movie's name itself is an alert. Go at your own risk.

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