Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram) Click here for audio version
One of the tricky truths about box office success is that “success” is measured by how much a movie makes over its budget. For instance, Rohit Dhawan’s “Shehzaada” (2023), starring Kartik Aryan, was made on a budget of INR 65 crore but made only 47.4 crores, so it’s considered a flop. On the other hand, Krishna Bhatt’s “1920: Horrors of the Heart” (2023), starring Avika Gor, was made on a budget of INR 10 crore and made over 17 crores, making it a hit in terms of monetary success. Even though they are from very different genres, I picked these two to compare because I rated them both 1.5 stars out of 5.
Now, Avika Gor is back in another horror film – “Bloody Ishq,” directed by Vikram Bhatt and Manish P. Chavan and written by Mahesh Bhatt. The story follows Neha (Avika Gor), who loses her memory after almost drowning in the sea, only to find out that she lives in a haunted bungalow on a secluded Scottish island with her shady husband Romesh (Vardhaan Puri), who is clearly hiding secrets from her. As a deadly ghost keeps trying to mess with Neha, she attempts to investigate what transpired before her accident, convinced the ghost is connected to her “love story”. It feels like Vikram Bhatt was aiming for a “Raaz” (2002) repeat, which frankly looks like a horror masterpiece in comparison (it was a solidly entertaining horror movie for the time).
Despite its intriguing premise, the awful special effects in “Bloody Ishq” make it an eyesore from the very first scene. Almost everything seems to have been shot on a green screen, Avika Gor’s Neha looks like she is trapped in a VR horror game from the early 2000s. The weird camera angles, which often follow Neha like a character in a video game, with evidently fake backgrounds, make the film unintentionally funny at points and incredibly distracting. “Bloody Ishq” manages to be worse than “1920: Horrors of the Heart” in terms of cinematography and visual effects. It makes me see the Netflix horror film “Asvins” in a fresh light because at least it was shot in an actual manor in Kent and thus boasted an authentic setting. If the directors had chosen to set “Bloody Ishq” in India, perhaps on a fictional island off the coast of Mumbai, and filmed scenes in real locations, it would have significantly enhanced the movie’s engagement factor.
Avika Gor is the only one who puts in any effort in her acting; everybody else portrays their characters like they are rehearsing for a college play. Neha and Romesh are supposed to be madly in love with each other, but the chemistry between Avika and Vardhaan Puri is like a love affair between a fish and a cat. In some of the romantic scenes between the two, it looks like Neha would prefer to hang herself than share a bed with her husband. There’s too much melodrama between the two characters, with Neha often behaving like a neurotic dumb damsel in distress. “I might have lost my memory, but I am not stupid,” she tells her husband in one scene, which sounds ironically funny. Girl loses her memory and makes no effort to find out anything about her past because there’s no WiFi or phone network on the island, not until a ghost tries to kill her.
Romesh’s character feels creepy from his first entry, leaving no scope for suspense over how he could be the troublemaker in the tale. “Bloody Ishq” should’ve instead been titled “Gaslight” (a Sara Ali Khan thriller that isn’t very watch-worthy either), because Romesh could win the “onscreen gaslighter of the year” award. He is the kind of husband who manages to find ways to blame his wife for ALL his errant actions. The ghost is the least scary thing about “Bloody Ishq”, whose appearance weirdly keeps changing, leading viewers to think there might be more than one supernatural spirits in the mansion. And in of the most random/funny sequences of the film, Neha decides to communicate with the ghost by playing the piano. What even? Kaha se mila ussey yeh idea? (Where did she get this idea from?)
With a 2-hour 18-minute runtime, “Bloody Ishq” is an overstretched nightmare, with a convoluted twist at the end that only cements Mahesh Bhatt’s fascination with the “other woman” trope and offers nothing new to viewers in terms of storytelling. You begin to wonder why the creators even made this half-hearted attempt. There’s probably a different story there.
Rating: 1 out of 5. “Bloody Ishq” is on Disney+ Hotstar.
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