Bejoy "Bobo" Charan Mathur is India's top magician, but, unknown to everyone, his life is falling apart. Hallucinations about his dead little sister, Misha, threaten his sanity. One day, he gets drawn to his old and vacant family apartment, where he opens the lid of a treasure chest, only to see a vision of Misha dead inside. He finally seeks psychiatric help from the odd Dr. Palit, who puts him under regression hypnosis to go back to the past, when Bobo was 11 and Misha was 6.
It is revealed that Bobo and Misha lived with their single father in their apartment. One day, Bobo reads a book about witchcraft, where he discovers the number 666 and uses it to travel on the elevator to an unlisted floor at the bottom of the building, which he tells Misha is the entrance to hell. According to Bobo, each building has its own hell, where the "bad people" of the building are consigned for eternity once they are dead. One day, a woman named Diana moves into their building, and Bobo is convinced that she is a daayan who surfaced following his and Misha's trip on the elevator.
Diana charms Bobo's father and marries him. Bobo then learns that a daayan's source of power is her plait. On Diana's birthday, during the night of the red moon, she sacrifices Misha to restore her dark powers. Bobo and his father discover Misha's corpse inside the trunk and a now-undisguised Diana hovering over her body. Diana kills Bobo's father with her ear-piercing screams. As she performs the rest of her ritual, the distraught Bobo finds his father's dagger and cuts off Diana's plait, destroying her source of power. Diana begins to crumble into dust, but she tells him that she will return.
Dr. Palit dismisses Bobo's visions as fantasy. Bobo and Tamara marry and adopt ten-year-old Zubin. Everything goes well till the irresistible Lisa Dutt enters their lives during a magic show. Everyone loves her, but Bobo suspects that the witch is back in the form of Lisa. Lisa buys Bobo's old apartment, adding to his suspicion. During Lisa's housewarming party, Tamara falls off the balcony and is hospitalized. Lisa visits her, but Bobo walks in and angrily tells her to get out when he finds her tinkering with the IV bag. Afraid for his family, he calls Dr. Palit for help.
Dr. Palit finds out something disturbing and calls Bobo, but the witch appears as Diana and kills him. Bobo finds Dr. Palit dead and sees a paper in his hand, on which Zubin's name is written. He looks for Zubin everywhere but finds him missing. He then rushes back to the old apartment and takes the elevator to hell.
There, he finds Zubin lying on an altar and the witch ready to sacrifice his son's life to sustain her powers. Bobo tries to save Zubin but encounters Tamara. In a twist, it is revealed that Tamara is the witch, not Lisa. Diana appears and tells him that he is a Pishacha, because no average person who pushes a button in an elevator finds hell. Tamara tells him that it took her twenty years to be reborn and she will not let him kill her again, and she knocks him unconscious.
Bobo wakes up and remembers the book where he read that a Pishacha can regain his strength on the night of a red moon, and today is the night of the red moon. With his newly acquired powers, he kills Tamara and returns his powers to Satan. The witch, now in the form of Diana, reveals that only an innocent person can kill a witch, and since Bobo killed her once before, he is no longer innocent. The two fight again until Bobo kicks the sacrificial dagger at Zubin. Zubin then manages to cut off Diana's plait, but the crumbling witch promises that she will return again.
The unique marketing campaign was carried out by the producer Ekta Kapoor for the promotion of this film. She produced a mini-series aired on the channel Life OK titled Ek Thhi Naayka starring the top actress of Indian Television from her path-breaking shows, including Smriti Irani, Sakshi Tanwar, Shweta Tiwari, Aamna Shariff, Mouli Ganguly, Ankita Lokhande, Kritika Kamra and Pooja Gaur.[8]
The music of Ek Thi Daayan was composed by Vishal Bhardwaj, with lyrics written by Gulzar.[9] The background score was composed by Clinton Cerejo. Musicperk.com rated the album 7/10 quoting "This album does impress in parts but fails to make a lasting impression."[10]
The film received a mainly positive response with praise particularly for Konkona Sen Sharma, as well as Huma Qureshi and Kalki Koechlin. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 5 critics' reviews are positive.[11] Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave Ek Thi Daayan 4.3 stars out of 5 and called it "An imaginative and appealing supernatural thriller".[12] Meena Iyer of The Times of India awarded it 3.5 out of 5 while remarking "Woven beautifully between the world of magic, occult and suspense, Ek Thi Daayan, makes for compulsive viewing, providing some spine-chilling thrills at short gaps".[13] Raja Sen of Rediff gave it 3 out of 5 star, noting,"Ek Thi Daayan isn't the scariest of horror films. It is, though, smartly crafted, highly original in its approach and a strikingly ambitious effort for the genre".[14]
So finally using the strategy that ghosts/witches don't roam outside during the sunny afternoons (they don't, right ?! ) I have finished watching 'Ek Thi Daayan'.. Really it was one of the scariest movies I have seen recently, since it has what I fear most as the main evil thing.. No No not the Daayan ! I meant the Chipkali !!!
This is what I posted in fb after watching the film and it perfectly comprises what I felt about the film. But since this is a blog post I have to debrief it into three or four more paragraphs.
So what intrigued me to watch this film ? Three things. 1. Huma Qureshi 2. the 'Yaaram' song 3. and Konkana's long braid which swayed like a king cobra in the trailer. So let's go through these one by one. The foremost reason I watched this movie and the biggest disappointment of the movie is Huma Qureshi. Why are you so fat ?!!!! In 'Gangs of Wasseypur' you were gorgeous ! in 'Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana' you were bubbly !! But now you are just fat !!!
Second, the songs.. Even though I skipped through most of the songs (Oops ! Now you know that I didn't watch this movie in theater :P ) It's not because it sounds anything like how the Dayaan's scream (or what ever you want to call it )make your head spinning. Acutally I would say music is the only thing in the movie that doesn't disappoint you much because even Emran Hashmi disappoints us with no hot song or a hot kiss. Well, actually there was a song in the beginning which looked like it's gonna be hot but I skipped through most of it not being able to watch the fatty Huma.
And then the last one. The long braid of the Daayan ! As per the story the power of the Daayan is in its long braid. So whenever she's gonna do something it sways like a snake. I don't know how you feel when you are reading it, But when I watched it in the trailer, I thought it might be scary and kept one of my hand near to face to hide my eyes if something scary happens whenever they show Konkana in the first half. But when they showed that Huma is the Daayan in the second half (Oops ! Spoiler Alert !!.. like you were planning to watch this movie :P ) my reaction changed into something like.. "what ever.. :"
And if you were hoping that I'm gonna say anything about the Chipkali, I googled it just to check whether I'm using the correct name or not and I know I'm gonna regret what I saw for at least another couple of days. So no comments about it :
So to conclude, the plus points of the movies are its music, Konkana Sen Sharma and our cute little Sara (Deiva Thirumagal fame). And the negative points are.. well.. the rest of all..
The movie is all about the super natural character called Daayan. The film is around magic and Daayans. There were some real spooky moments in the movie that were unexpected. One would actually jump off the seat.
The other two, Huma and Kalki were good as well but as they say, experienced actors are always remarkable. The Gangs of Wasseypur girl, Huma was as beautiful as she could be and the Dev.D star, Kalki wore some real good accessories. In fact I really loved the dressing of Konkona and Kalki in the movie.
A childhood trauma comes back to haunt Bobo (Emran Hashmi), a famous Magician, in the middle of one of his performances, leading to a near-fatal accident of an assistant. We learn of an incident that caused the death of his father and six-year-old sister. But we don't know how. Bobo is hesitant to talk about it, even with his fianc Tamara (Huma Qureshi). He confides in Dr Ranjan Palit (Rajatabha Dutta), a psychiatrist who knew him and his family since he was a child.
The flashback is told like a chilling bedtime story. We meet eleven-year-old Bobo (a very good Visshwesh Tiwari, with his wiser-than-age genius hairstyle), who has an unhealthy obsession with occult literature; his kid sister Misha ((Sara Arjun), his partner-in-crime; and their father Professor Mathur (Pavan Malhotra): a nice little family despite their mother not being alive. With Mr Mathur staying out all day for work, Bobo and Misha spend most of their time in the house, taking trips in the elevator to the basement. They think of it as hell, where the worst people of the building go to die, including evil stepmoms.
It's no surprise that Diana (Konkona Sen Sharma) turns up in that elevator one day, as if appearing out of thin air. Bobo has a nagging suspicion that she is a daayan. Friendly with the children and flirty with their father, Diana soon enters their lives as a trained governess, and before you know it, Mr Mathur's bedroom (Malhotra is excellent as a loving father who can't help succumb to Diana's charms, ignoring his eleven-year-old son's warnings about her being a witch). One by one, all of Bobo's worst fears come true. Now he has a stepmother who may be a daayan. (Hashmi's deadpan narration has a strange appeal to it: 'Mujhe yakeen hai ki Diana daayan hai.')
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