Phoonk - I need some AIR!

Today I saw Phoonk (a horror movie by Ram Gopal Verma). Reportedly he had issued a challenge to give anyone who would watch the whole movie alone in a theatre a prize of rupees one lakh.
I am sure he issued that challenge because he was sure no one would be able to see it that way. Not because it is a good horror story that leaves looking over your shoulders weeks after the movie. But because it is such a slow and predictable movie that you would die of boredom if you saw it alone. After the first ten minutes I wanted to forward the movie to its last scene.
The story has been copied from Geherayee (an EXCELLENT hindi horror movie) and Ram Gopal Verma's Raat (another EXCELLENT hindi horror movie) which shows an age old struggle between superstition and science.

The actors have all done average work (especially since they didnt have much of a story to go by). But the characterization has been done quite badly. The grandmother keeps shaking her head like a spring loaded car-toy trying to simulate a muscle spasm. I am sure she would have had a neck sprain with all that head shaking.

The good 'tantrik' has a facial expression which is a combination of a man suffering from intense constipation and a man having the best sex of his life. Weird but true!

The only thing positive about the movie is that the special effects were good. Not excellent but much better than the cartoon-like special effects usually seen in Hindi movies.