Horror Story is the first Bollywood horror movie I’ve ever seen. It’s nice to learn that the tropes of the horror genre are universal, even when the movie itself isn’t so great. Don’t get me wrong. Horror Story is entertaining and has a few good jump scares, including one that made me shriek so loud it startled my cat. But the story is – well, you’ll see.
Seven attractive young people are busy getting drunk at a bar because one of them is going to America. They decide to spend the night in a hotel that’s supposed to be haunted. That’s pretty much your plot, right there, which is one of the movie’s problems. Nobody has any agency or even much of a personality. The Final Girl doesn’t drink, which good for her!
Once at the hotel, our hapless youngsters immediately start breaking the tropes. Nobody has sex but they split up all the time, even after one of them observes that the evil spirit only kills stragglers so maybe they should all stick together. Eventually our heroes discover that the hotel used to be a mental institution that was the final residence of Maya the Witch, who calls the petrified youths on her cell phone to let them know she wants to kill them all.
Maya doesn’t quite measure up to my favorite evil witch of all time, Bathsheba of The Conjuring, but she really hustles. There are seven youths, so it takes her awhile to whittle the crowd down to a manageable size. Luckily, these young people are really dumb, which helps. Eventually the survivors discover a way to banish Maya, which is good, and then decide to split up, because that makes no sense at all. I try not to root for people to die in horror movies, but Horror Story strained my resolve.
I enjoyed Horror Story. It’s a movie with plot elements but no real plot, but who cares? It looks good; there’s nothing I hate more than a gritty, grainy movie where you can’t see shit. Bottom line: there are worse ways to kill 85 minutes.
Abandoned Places 