Name: Bhram
Cast: Kalki Koechlin, Sanjay Suri, Eijaz Khan, Bhumika Chawla
Direction: Sangeeth Sivan
If there’s one genre in the web space that truly has a lot of potential to come up with intriguing content, it is the horror genre. Zee5’s next ‘Bhram’ is a quintessential example of the same.
The story and plot of Bhram revolves around the life story of a young girl called Alisha Khanna (Kalki Koechlin), who happens to be a bestselling author of love stories.
However, a shocking and sudden car accident turns her life upside down and she loses a lot of stability with respect to her mindset. Hence, in order to regain her stability, and most importantly, find self-worth and happiness, she turns to her sister Ankita (Bhumika Chawla) and decides to visit and stay with her and her husband Peter Paul (Sanjay Suri) in the beautiful mountains around Shimla in Himachal Pradesh.
The opening sequence starts with Alisha and Ankita traveling in their car to Ankita’s home, and suddenly, as the car suddenly comes to a halt due to a luckily avoided accident, an old man with the typical Hindi horror project dialogue of ‘Mujhe Pata tha tum yaha zaroor aaogi’ comes to entirely confuse Alisha about how he happens to know her, as this is apparently her first visit here.
As Alisha and Ankita reach home, a confused Alisha feels totally surprised seeing Ankita’s house as she gets a feeling that she has seen it in the past. However, Ankita is quick to dismiss the fact, saying that she had WhatsApped her the images of the house and that’s where the resemblance comes from.
As Alisha begins to settle into the new environment of her sister’s house, she often feels sad about the fact that her last relationship with her ex-boyfriend (Omkar Kapoor) ended because of varying priorities, the said case being he wanted Alisha to abort their baby while Alisha was against it. Battling depression, Alisha ends up being prone to hallucinations, due to which she is under medication and that’s where her sister Ankita’s care and love for her becomes all the more important for her.
One fine night, Alisha meets her sister’s husband’s old friend Pradeep, who is totally smitten by Alisha’s beauty and writing. As the night unfolds further, Alisha starts getting visions of a girl and that’s where she tries to get into investigation mode. Although Ankita and Peter try to brush it aside as another instance of hallucination due to her already existing psychological disorders, Alisha surely isn’t convinced about the same and hence wants to delve more into the matter and that’s when she finds out that the same girl had actually passed away 20 years before. The rest of the narrative and the climax is yet to follow as to why and how the entire chain of events open up, as this review is based on just the first two episodes of the series out of 8 episodes. Stay tuned for more as ‘Bhram’ streams on Zee5 from 24th October onwards.
IWMBuzz Verdict: Right from the first frame, Bhram gives you a sense of chill and scare like very few projects. What’s best is the fact that the makers haven’t tried to get over-imaginative and have stuck to getting the basics right and as practical as possible by integrating the narrative with the issue of psychological disorder. The story is intriguing and the shots called by the director are gripping and extremely interesting. From the ideal drone shots to capture the scenic beauty of the mountains, to getting the lights right to sync well with the predefined background score which intends to send a shiver down your spine, everything seems to be right with the first two episodes of Bhram. The screenplay, cinematography, and direction is rightfully interlinked and director Sangeeth Sivan manages to get the best out of Kalki by making the story very much believable and not fictional, which adds to the scare part of the whole scenario. To sum it up, its ideal content for binge-watching, as when it comes to watching such kind of content, one cannot let go without unearthing the whole mystery.
3.5/5 stars.