“The Horror Film That Couldn’t Scare a Power Outage”
Let’s start with the headline here: Help is a horror movie that desperately needs some. Rajeev Virani’s directorial debut tries to merge Bollywood melodrama with supernatural thrills, but the end result is less The Conjuring and more Kabhi Kabhie Kya Horror Hai.
Released on Friday the 13th (because marketing loves irony), Help stars Bobby Deol and Mugdha Godse as a troubled couple who go to Mauritius to patch up their marriage and instead find themselves haunted by a ghost — and, more importantly, by terrible writing. It’s the kind of movie that makes you long for the days when horror in Bollywood just meant a fog machine, a synthesizer, and the Ramsay Brothers yelling “Cut!” over a fake bat on strings.
The Setup: Bollywood Goes to the Beach, and Logic Goes Home
The film opens in 1990 Mauritius, where Susan Alves, a disturbed woman in an asylum, scribbles demonic doodles like a satanic art student before killing herself in front of her husband. It’s meant to be shocking. It’s not. It’s mostly confusing.
Fast forward to present-day Mumbai, where Pia (Mugdha Godse) is married to Vic (Bobby Deol), a horror film director — which is fitting, because he’s about to star in one accidentally. Their marriage is on the rocks, and the chemistry between them makes dry toast look passionate.
When Pia’s father has a heart attack, the couple heads to Mauritius to be with him, setting off the film’s central question: Why is this family cursed, and why does every Bollywood horror movie require an overseas shooting location?
Mauritius: The Island of Bad Decisions
Once in Mauritius, spooky things begin happening, though “spooky” here means doors creaking like a haunted door hinge commercial and dolls that look like they came free with a Happy Meal.
Pia starts having nightmares about her dead twin sister, Dia. Apparently, Dia drowned years ago, though Pia can’t remember much because repressed trauma is Bollywood’s favorite plot device after amnesia and shirtless montages.
The family dog starts barking at nothing — which, in fairness, is the most relatable reaction anyone has to this movie — and then promptly dies. The death of the dog is the emotional high point of Help, not because it’s tragic, but because it means one less character with more charisma than Bobby Deol.
Bobby Deol: Horror’s Least Expressive Survivor
Bobby Deol plays Vic, a horror director who apparently learned everything he knows about fear from old Scooby-Doo reruns. His emotional range oscillates between “mildly annoyed” and “confused man at the airport baggage claim.”
There’s a scene where Vic is attacked by a ghost, and instead of screaming, he looks like he’s trying to remember if he left the gas stove on. You can almost hear the director yelling, “More fear, Bobby!” and Bobby replying, “I’m trying, bro. This is my scared face.”
To be fair, Mugdha Godse isn’t much better. She spends half the movie fainting and the other half staring into the middle distance like she’s waiting for her paycheck to clear.
The Ghost: A Spirit With Performance Anxiety
The titular haunting comes courtesy of a vengeful spirit — because, of course, it does. It turns out that Pia had a twin sister who drowned, and their mother Susan was possessed by a demonic presence while pregnant. So, naturally, one of the unborn triplets (yes, there was a secret third baby because why not?) decides to come back decades later and settle old family scores.
This ghost isn’t scary so much as needy. It spends half its time throwing furniture around like an angry interior decorator and the other half photobombing home videos. There’s even a Poltergeist-style possession sequence, except instead of terror, it inspires mild nostalgia for better movies.
By the end, the spirit manages to kill the family patriarch, but not before the audience dies of boredom.
Shreyas Talpade: Paranormal Comic Relief (Accidentally)
Enter Dr. Aditya Motwani (Shreyas Talpade), a “parapsychologist” who looks like he got lost on his way to a comedy set. He’s the film’s supernatural expert, the kind of character who exists to deliver exposition so ridiculous it should come with a laugh track.
At one point, he solemnly declares, “This is not madness… this is possession.” Congratulations, Doctor Obvious — your diagnosis has earned you a place in the annals of cliché history.
He’s supposed to be the smart one, but he ends up dead, which at least proves he had the good sense to escape this script before the end credits.
The Soundtrack: Jump Scares by Karaoke Machine
Every horror movie needs an unsettling soundtrack. Help decided to go with “unsettling” in the sense that it unsettles your eardrums. The background score is a mashup of ominous humming, sudden violin shrieks, and the occasional techno beat that makes you wonder if the ghost is about to drop a mixtape.
At one point, a door slams shut to the accompaniment of what sounds like someone dropping a tabla down a flight of stairs. Subtlety, thy name is not this film.
Visuals: When Every Shot Looks Like a Tourism Ad
To its credit, Help was shot in Mauritius, which means every scene is visually gorgeous — right up until someone opens their mouth. You can practically hear the tourism board whispering, “Ignore the demon baby; look at those crystal-blue waters!”
Even the haunted mansion looks like an Airbnb with good lighting. At no point does anyone seem particularly scared of the house — mostly because it’s the kind of place you’d expect to host influencer yoga retreats, not demonic resurrections.
Twist Ending: Ghost Baby for the Sequel Nobody Wanted
After an hour and a half of supernatural soap opera, Vic traps the evil spirit “in another realm” using techniques that make Ghostbusters look like NASA engineers. Pia gives birth seven months later, and everything seems fine — until the baby starts twitching and opens its eyes to reveal, you guessed it, the same demonic glare we’ve seen fifty times already.
It’s meant to be a chilling cliffhanger. Instead, it feels like the movie winking at you and saying, “Don’t worry, we’ll be back… to haunt streaming services forever.”
What Went Wrong: Everything but the End Credits
There are bad horror films, and then there’s Help. It takes a promising premise — haunted family, tropical island, evil spirit — and drowns it in slow pacing, wooden acting, and dialogue so awkward it should come with a trigger warning.
Even the scares feel outsourced. Every spooky moment is preceded by ten seconds of loud music, ensuring that even the jump scares die of anticipation.
The cinematography screams “expensive,” but the screenplay whispers “student film.” And the ghost, poor thing, seems as trapped in this production as the audience.
Final Thoughts: Exorcise This Film From Your Memory
Help wants to be India’s answer to The Sixth Sense. What it delivers is The Sense That Never Arrived. It’s not scary, it’s not thrilling, and it’s not even unintentionally funny enough to qualify as “so bad it’s good.”
It’s just… there. Like a faint odor of something burning — in this case, the careers of everyone involved.
If you want real horror, try imagining Bobby Deol explaining the plot to someone at a dinner party:
“So, my wife’s possessed by her undead triplet, and I’m a horror director who’s bad at horror.”
“Was it supposed to be funny?”
“No, but people laughed anyway.”
Grade: D (for “Dead on Arrival — and Not in the Good Way”)
Help is the cinematic equivalent of calling a priest for an exorcism, and the priest shows up with a selfie stick. You don’t need Help — you need a refund.
