Rajmohol

Rajmohol is one of those regional remakes that looks, on paper, like "just another haunted house movie," but becomes more interesting when you know its lineage. It's the Bengali take on the Malayalam classic Manichitrathazhu, relocating the cursed-ancestral-home story to a zamindar mansion and filtering it through a mix of psychological suspense, melodrama and old-school ghost-movie tropes. What emerges is a film that constantly hovers between two explanations-spirit and split personality-even if, by the end, the psychological reading feels more convincing than the supernatural one.

The story follows city couple Sumit and his wife Deboshree, who leave Kolkata for Sumit's ancestral property in the countryside. The mansion they move into is huge, decaying and steeped in stories. Local villagers and older relatives whisper that it is haunted by the spirit of Chandramukhi, a beautiful court dancer from generations past who was kept by the zamindar. Chandramukhi's heart, however, belonged to another man, and when the landlord discovered the affair, he murdered her lover and tortured her to death. She died vowing revenge on the zamindar's descendants during the Durgashtami festival. As in all good ghost tales, there is also a locked room, sealed for decades, where Chandramukhi once lived and where her presence is said to be strongest.

Deboshree, curious by temperament and already feeling stressed by the move and the complicated family politics, becomes fascinated with Chandramukhi's story. Predictably, she disobeys the rule and opens the forbidden room. That act seems to flip a switch in the house. At night, classical songs echo along the corridors, shadows flicker, objects move on their own, and people narrowly escape serious accidents. At the same time, Deboshree's behaviour starts to fracture. She drifts into trances, speaks as if she were Chandramukhi, and sometimes cannot remember what she did the night before. Family members, unwilling to accuse her directly, look for other culprits. Old resentments flare up, especially around Sumit's former love Malini, who lives nearby and still carries scars from their broken relationship.

Enter Dr Agni, a psychiatrist returning from the United States, called in to "check the mental side of things." He brings a lighter, almost comic energy at first, fumbling around the old house, misreading social cues and joking his way through the tension. Beneath that, he is quietly watching Deboshree: the gaps in her memory, the way she identifies with Chandramukhi, the coincidence between the legend's details and her night-time episodes. As the haunting intensifies, Agni forms the view that Deboshree is suffering from a dissociative identity disorder, with a second personality that believes itself to be Chandramukhi. The twist with this version is that the film hints the real Chandramukhi's spirit may also have been released when the room was opened, riding on Deboshree's psychological vulnerability.

The characters are drawn in broad strokes but with enough nuance to work within this framework. Deboshree is both victim and, in her altered state, perpetrator. In her normal self, she is polite, slightly insecure and genuinely trying to be a good wife in an unfamiliar, slightly hostile environment. Under stress, she gravitates toward Chandramukhi as a figure who embodies all the anger, humiliation and longing she cannot express openly. In her "Chandramukhi" mode, she becomes theatrical, vindictive and dangerous. The film doesn't always go deep into her internal life, but it gives enough glimpses to make the split feel like the result of accumulated pressure rather than a random possession.

Sumit fits the recognisable mould of the well-meaning but emotionally clumsy husband. He insists on the ancestral home partly out of pride, partly out of nostalgia, without fully understanding what he is asking his wife to endure. His unresolved feelings about Malini and his inability to perceive Deboshree's psychological deterioration fuel the sense that he is part of the problem even if he is not the villain. Malini herself is an interesting addition compared to the original: she starts as a potential red herring, almost a suspect in the strange events, but gradually emerges as another wounded figure whose life was derailed by family decisions and social expectations. Her eventual connection with Agni gives the film a comforting romantic endpoint after all the tension.

Dr Agni is perhaps the clearest expression of Rajmohol's balancing act. As a psychiatrist, he represents rational, medical explanations; as a Bengali commercial hero, he must also be likeable, occasionally goofy and capable of stepping into a quasi-heroic role during the climax. His diagnosis of Deboshree's condition is surprisingly sharp for a film of this sort, and his final "treatment" method-staging a symbolic killing in which Deboshree, in her Chandramukhi persona, believes she has murdered Sumit-is a recognisable dramatisation of a therapeutic idea: let the dissociated personality fulfill its vow in a controlled, symbolic way so it can retire. This doubles as a supernatural resolution, too: if you accept that Chandramukhi's spirit is real, she also gets the revenge she was promised.

Thematically, the film works on a few overlapping levels. At the most obvious, it is about the lingering effects of patriarchal violence. Chandramukhi's original story is a pure example of male privilege gone murderous: a powerful landlord treats a woman as property, punishes her for loving someone else and erases her autonomy. Her vow of revenge represents a kind of spectral feminist rage that history never allowed her to express directly. Deboshree, generations later, finds herself under more modern but still constraining pressures: a husband who doesn't fully see her, a family that judges her, the constant comparison with another woman. It is not hard to see why her mind would reach for Chandramukhi as a template.

On another level, Rajmohol plays with the tension between scientific and supernatural readings of the same events. Most of the actual plot mechanics can be explained through Deboshree's actions while in an altered state and her subsequent amnesia. Yet the film deliberately leaves cracks where the ghost explanation can seep in: an image here, an inexplicable timing there, suggestions from religious figures who speak of vengeful spirits. The audience can choose to treat Chandramukhi as a literal ghost exploiting a mentally fragile host, or as a cultural mask for Deboshree's illness. Personally, the psychological reading feels more coherent, but the film clearly wants to keep both possibilities alive.

Visually, Rajmohol uses its mansion setting well. The house is shot as a labyrinth of dark corridors, high ceilings and shadowy staircases. The locked room is cluttered with objects that feel touched by history: draped fabrics, dusty mirrors, figurines and lamps. Whenever Deboshree slips into Chandramukhi mode, the lighting and framing shift toward a more stylised, almost theatrical look, with the camera lingering on her eyes and gestures. The cinematography never reaches the polish of larger industries, but it is effective enough to support the mood the story needs, and the 135-minute cut allows scenes to breathe a little more than a choppier TV version would.

In terms of strengths, Rajmohol's biggest asset is that the core story is inherently strong. The mix of family drama, long-buried historical cruelty and a woman's mind cracking under pressure has proven compelling in every language it has travelled through. This version adds its own flavours: the Bengali cultural setting, the added emphasis on a love triangle and the slightly different tone of Dr Agni as a character. The film also deserves credit for not turning Deboshree into a one-note villain when she is "possessed"; it always brings her back to a recognisably human vulnerability.

On the other hand, some weaknesses are hard to ignore. The attempt to have it both ways-serious mental illness and literal ghost-means that neither side is explored as deeply as it could be. The script occasionally leans on convenient exposition or melodramatic beats rather than letting the psychological horror really sink in. Agni's comedic moments, while standard for this type of cinema, sometimes clash with the darkness of Deboshree's condition. And compared to the Malayalam original, the writing is broader, with less focus on subtle family dynamics and more on overt plot points.

When placed side by side with Manichitrathazhu, Rajmohol feels like a cousin rather than a twin. The skeleton is the same: ancestral home, tragic dancer, curious wife, apparent possession, psychiatrist friend, and a climactic ritual that resolves the haunting by addressing a fractured mind. The key difference is tone and emphasis. Manichitrathazhu is firmly grounded in psychology and domestic realism; it invites you to see everything as the tragic misreading of an ill woman by a superstitious family. Rajmohol keeps that reading intact but overlays it with a more traditional ghost-story layer and a stronger dose of romantic melodrama. Whether that makes it richer or more diluted depends on what you want from the story. As a remake, it may not reach the layered brilliance of the original, but as a Bengali reimagining that walks the line between psychiatric case study and gothic fable, Rajmohol has its own modest, haunted charm.