Khamoshiyan

Khamoshiyan
Movie Poster
Directed by	Karan Darra
Produced by	Mahesh Bhatt (Presenter) Mukesh Bhatt
Written by	Vikram Bhatt
Starring	Ali Fazal Sapna Pabbi Gurmeet Choudhary
Music by	Songs: Jeet Ganguly Ankit Tiwari Bobby Imraan Navad Zafar Background Score: Raju Singh
Cinematography	Nigam Bomzan
Edited by	Kuldip K. Mehan
Production company	Vishesh Films
Distributed by	Fox Star Studios
Release dates	30 January 2015 (2015-01-30)[1]
Running time	122 minutes
Country	India
Language	Hindi
Box office	est. ₹14.02 crore (US$2.1 million)[2][3]

Khamoshiyan (English: Silences) is a 2015 Indian romantic horror film, written by Vikram Bhatt and directed by debutant, Karan Darra. Mahesh Bhatt and Mukesh Bhatt produced the film in association with Vishesh Films.

The film stars Gurmeet Choudhary, Ali Fazal and Sapna Pabbi in principal roles. Initially, the film was scheduled for release on 23 January 2015, but was postponed to 30 January 2015.^[4]

Plot

Kabir (Ali Fazal), is a novelist, whose failed career and relationship with Simran (Debina Bonnerjee) forces him to move to Kashmir in search of an inspirational story. In Kashmir, Kabir stops at a guest house run by the beautiful but mysterious lady Meera (Sapna Pabbi). Meera is married to Jaidev (Gurmeet Chaudhary), who is confined to his bed. On his first night at the guest house, Kabir begins seeing strange apparitions. He also becomes attracted towards Meera. Meera, who is also falling for Kabir, refuses to go with him. Kabir finds out that Meera has not been out of the house for two years.

Kabir now in love with Meera, tries to take her away from the house. While driving away,an evil force comes before their car and they have an accident. Curious, Kabir calls a tantrik after drugging Meera. The tantrik discovers an evil spirit in the house which attacks them, he claims that the spirit is of Jaidev, who is dead. Realization dawns upon Kabir, and he recalls Meera speaking on the phone in a man's voice and never seeing Jaidev in person. Kabir sneaks into Jaidev's room, only to find Jaidev sleeping. Furious with Kabir, Meera tells him to leave.

Kabir later returns to confront Meera. She reveals that she was involved in a hit and run two years back and to evade imprisonment she ran away to a small town in Kashmir, where she met Jaidev, a rich industrialist who lived in the huge mansion. She fell in love with him and soon they both got married. One night Meera saw Jaidev performing a ritual slaughter and praying to the devil. Scared and shocked Meera tried to run away but she was caught by Jaidev. In a struggle to stop her, Jaidev fell from the balcony and was paralysed below the waist. Later Jaidev committed suicide and left a letter for Meera, mentioning that she will have to live in the house forever with his soul, and if she ever tried to run away, his lawyer was instructed to open a letter upon news of his disappearance, which will detail that Meera has killed him and was the culprit in the hit and run. Meera had to stay in the house with Jaidev's soul and delude the world that her husband is alive.

Kabir decides to steal the letter from the lawyer's office, however he finds that there was no lawyer and Jaidev was bluffing. On knowing Jaidev's lie, Meera and Kabir plan to cremate Jaidev's body and set his spirit to rest. While they cremate his body, inside the house a laugh echos in the one of the rooms and Jaidev in a painting smiles sadisticly. To their surprise Jaidev returns to haunt Meera and captures her in the painting. Kabir goes to the tantrik for help, who it turns out is also a spirit. The tantrik tells Kabir that the painting is merely a portal to the world of spirits. He gives Kabir holy water to spray on Jaidev and informs him that he doesn't have long to save Meera. After a lot of deadly struggles, Kabir drinks a drop of Jaidev's blood to get Jaidev's spirit to enter his body. He later drinks holy water, which makes Jaidev's evil spirit perish, setting Meera free.

Kabir is shown at a book launch for his latest novel, Khamoshiyan. Meera is also at the party but the two leave to spend some time alone together.

Cast

• Sapna Pabbi as Meera, a beautiful but mysterious lady who runs the hotel. She lives lonely and worthless life until she meets with Kabir and falls in love with him.
• Ali Fazal as Kabir, a lonely novelist who searches for an inspiring story, meets Meera and falls in love with her. He vows to protect her from the evil spirit.
• Gurmeet Choudhary as Jaidev, Meera's psychopathic husband, who bonds her even after his death as an evil spirit.
• Vikram Bhatt as Kabir's editor
• Debina Bonnerjee as Simran, Kabir's ex-girlfriend.

Production

Development

The main cast of Gurmeet Choudhary, Ali Fazal and Sapna Pabbi was finalized in mid-2014.^[1] In May 2014, it was reported that Gurmeet Choudhary will be playing a negative role in the film.^[5] In June 2014, actress Sapna Pabbi signed a three film deal with Vishesh Films and committed to work on the film as her first movie of the contract.^[6] In an interview Fazal stated that, in the film he plays a romantic writer with grey shades.^[7] Producer, Mahesh Bhatt said in an interview "With a recipe of great music, state-of-art digital effects and a love story that brings back the intrigue of Mahal, it will repackage and raise the bar for the horror genre in Bollywood".^[8] Bhatt further added that the film has the potential of becoming a franchise. Ankit Tiwari was hired to compose the film's music.^[9]

Filming

The shoot of the film's first schedule began on 5 June 2014^[10] and ended in August 2014.^[11] Shooting for the film's second schedule took place in Kashmir in September 2014 for 15 days.^[12] Due to a high flood in Kashmir, the producers had to shift the shoot to South Africa, as a replacement for Kashmir.^[13] On 21 October 2014 filming took place in Cape Town.^[14] The pre-climax was filmed at the forests of Legacy Estates in Cape Town.^[15]

Marketing

A video was created to announce the launch date of a trailer of Khamoshiyan; it was uploaded on the video sharing platform, YouTube.^[16] The video featured background music only and was used to introduce the characters, unveil the logo and the tagline.^[17] The film's music launch was held in a venue below ground level, making it the first underground music launch event for a Hindi film.^[17]

The filmmakers also announced the launch of a novel and a videogame. The novel will feature the story of Khamoshiyan and two other Vikram Bhatt penned stories – 1920 (film) and 1920: Evil Returns.^[18][19] On the other hand, the videogame will feature different characters who all will unveil a dark secret and tell a different story as the player advances.^[17]

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of Khamoshiyan was composed by Ankit Tiwari, Jeet Ganguly, Navad Zafar & Bobby Imraan. The lyrics for the soundtrack were penned by Rashmi Singh and Sayeed Quadri.

The first single of the album, "Khamoshiyan", composed by Jeet Ganguly and crooned by Arijit Singh, was released on 10 December 2014. The second single of the album, "Tu Har Lamha", composed by Bobby Imraan and sung by Arijit Singh, was released on 19 December 2014.

Additionally, the filmmakers purchased the rights of the song "Aayega Aane Wala" from the film Mahal (1949).^[20]

Track listing

Critical response

Shakti Shetty of Mid-Day.com noted similarities between Khamoshiyan and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath, but commented, "the Indianisation doesn't really come out great."^[21] On the story's pacing, Shetty wrote, "If the first half was building up tension with subplots of mysteries, the second half does a tedious job of chronicling what happened in the past."^[21]

References

External links

• Khamoshiyan at the Internet Movie Database
• Khamoshiyan at Bollywood Hungama