Mondo Macabro: Aatma the Ghost (2006) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Mondo Macabro

In 2023, Mondo Macabro unveiled a six-film Blu-ray boxed set of films devoted to the Ramsay Brothers collection entitled Bollywood Horror.  While the story of the Ramsay film empire of Indian horror movies started by former radio manufacturer Fatehchand U. Ramsay before being succeeded by his sons and grandsons, the Bollywood Horror box has long since gone out of print and remaining copies have sold out.  For those who missed out on the box going for exorbitant prices on eBay, fear not, as the boutique label in recent months have made efforts to rerelease them separately.  Near the end of 2025, a standard edition of their 1988 horror film Veerana: Vengeance of the Vampire came out while today’s feature Aatma the Ghost, one of the Ramsay’s later-tier efforts from 2006, is only getting a standalone disc now at the beginning of the month.  One of their shorter, more polished ones compared to prior efforts that seemed to go on past the two-hour mark, Aatma for the seasoned and uninitiated fans of the Ramsay Brothers is a pretty good throwback to the company’s earliest days.

 
Dr. Aman Mehra (Kapil Jhaveri) lives comfortably in wealth and success as a physician with his wife Nehra (Neha Bajpai) in a swanky villa.  On the cusp of celebrating their very first wedding anniversary, a mysterious, imposing man appears to forewarn the doctor that he must perform a post-mortem on a man called Avinash (Deep Dhillon) and provide an accurate report.  If not, he’ll face vague supernatural consequences.  Discovering the body of Avinash seems to be the man he spoke to the night before, he performs the operation but is then besieged by gangsters demanding he falsifies the report with threats against him and Nehra’s safety.  Soon after, Dr. Aman’s life turns upside down as Nehra seems to become possessed by the vengeful, murderous spirit of Avinash who has a score to settle with the gangsters.  Seeking exorcism to save Nehra from the malevolent spirit and still bring the real truth about the post-mortem report to light, Dr. Aman soon finds himself battling not only for his own life but for his wife’s soul as well.

 
Produced by Tulsi Ramsay and directed by Deepak Ramsay, the Bava-esque riff of (or ripoff) of Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead and other demonic possession fare with the time honored random incongruous musical numbers thrown into the mix, Aatma despite being made in the 2000s looks, sounds and feels like it was cherry picked out of the 1980s right down to the curvy widescreen lenses used.  While maximalist and more silly than scary with obvious copy/pasting of particular scenes from the aforementioned Raimi classic, Aatma is more or less a smorgasbord of horror tropes cribbed from 80s American movies.  Where it works best involves time honored Ramsay Brothers cinematographer Gangu Ramsay’s scope 2.35:1 camerawork capturing the neon-lit set pieces with glossy glamour and veteran Bollywood composer Anu Malik’s serviceable synth-oriented score interspersed with the occasional full blown musical song and dance number.  There’s also quite a bit more blood and gore in this particular offering than previously including some rather ghoulish makeup effects. 

 
Where it seems to falter involves some now-dated CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb against the otherwise crisp and clean 35mm footage.  Performances from the ensemble cast are mostly good when they aren’t awkwardly breaking into song though for many that’s where the strange charm of Bollywood Horror stems for most people.  Kapil Jhaveri makes the doctor into a handsome leading man with a heroic demeanor, fending off temptresses with ulterior motives and gangsters.  Shabana Raza known professionally as Neha Bajpai brings a youthful innocence turned scary demonic firebrand to the role of Nehra.  The show stealer of course is Deep Dhillon as the vengeful angry spirit determined to see justice prevail even after his death and efforts to silence the truth.

 
Released theatrically in Indian cinemas in May of 2006, Aatma the Ghost feels sort of like an homage to the former Ramsay Brothers output of genre mashing musicals and horror and the crime thriller together rather than the real thing.  A noble effort paying homage to the Ramsay works of the past rather than channeling their patina and style directly, it eventually gave rise to more Hindi horror from Deepak Ramsay including a television series called Ramsay House: The Fantasy World as well as the horror film The Fridge.  The newest film in the Bollywood Horror box with all the others made between the 1980s and 1990s, Aatma might be a disappointment for hardcore fans.  But for newcomers and casual filmgoers like myself, it represented a mostly good midpoint respectful of one’s time for those just dipping their toes into the waters of Hindi horror.

--Andrew Kotwicki