I wasn't expecting much from 'Aatma' when I first rented it. The movie seems heavily inspired by SFX tricks that recent avant-garde horror movies have been using. Besides special effects, 'Aatma' has nothing new to promise. The star cast is below average as most of the actors are either struggling souls or have lost their game at the big arena of Bollywood after a hard struggle.
Dr. Aman (Kapil Zaveri) is a surgeon of high repute. He is assisted by his sister-in-law (wife's sister) Dr. Aarti (Amreina). Aarti is a jovial teen who is romantically embroiled with Siddharth (Vikram Singh). Aman is happily married to Neha (Neha) and they seem to be as happy as a kitten with a saucer of milk. One night a stone-faced man (Deep Dhillon) knocks Dr. Aman's door. When Aman inquires of his intentions, the man says that a man named Avinash Malhotra has died and Aman is supposed to enter the right cause of his death in the postmortem report or else Aman and his family would be in great peril. He also tells that Avinash Malhotra was poisoned and his death wasn't a natural one.
Next day Dr. Aman is jogging when some vagabonds stop him on the way and tell him that he should enter the false cause of Avinash Malhotra's death in the postmortem report. Moments later a man named Advocate Khurana (Sadashiv Amrapurkar) meets Aman in his hospital and repeats the same thing what vagabonds said earlier. He also arranges Aman's conversation with the man who wants to falsify the postmortem report. He is no other than Vikram Malhotra (Mukesh Tiwari), Avinash Malhotra's younger brother.
Aman doesn't want to entertain these high brows but has to reluctantly succumb to their demands when his wife Neha is tormented. This mistake forms the crux of the story. Aman forges the postmortem report as directed and soon he and his wife Neha are terrorized by the vengeful spirit of Avinash. Neha is possessed and the villains go down one by one.
We must accept whatever is trashed out because most of the Bollywood horror flicks do not have a more sinister plot to offer. The film is not at all cheesy or cheap by any means. Due to good performances and enticing SFX, the movie also evades sleaziness. Ramsays have proved that in the long run of B-grade horror shockers, they are still millions of miles ahead of the rotten and turgid directors like R. Mittal, R.K. Khanna, Dharam, and the list might go on.
