A finely carved wooden box is displayed prominently in a stately colonial house in Mauritius, where the new residents, a troubled couple from Mumbai, are seeking new beginnings. That, however, will not be the case. A scowling woman arrives to seek work, loud creaks and whispers begin and end, and things begin to go bump in the night, drawing Sam (Emraan Hashmi) and Mahi (Nikita Dutta) into a dark mystery rooted in the island’s Jewish history.
If you believe that the novelty of being shot in stunning locations and having an intriguing origin storey would add levity to a film about an evil spirit (a ‘dybbuk’ is a malicious spirit that takes over a human whose body and soul are not properly fused), you are dead wrong. ‘Dybbuk,’ a film adaptation of the Malayalam film ‘Ezra,’ is a pure numbers game. Jump scares, shadows flitting across rooms, gruesomely contorted bloody bodies, pale women in white robes, gibbering creatures scrabbling along walls, and, of course, characters levitating: you can cross them off as they appear.
When you see a priest dressed in his habit (they never appear in civvies) in a Bollywood horror film, you know the next thing you’re going to hear is that a) this house is haunted, b) an evil spirit is nearby, or c) this man/woman/child is possessed. Denzil Smith plays the priest faithfully; Manav Kaul portrays a hardworking rabbi, waving ancient ornaments to ward off the spirit. There is a subplot about a father and son, as well as a pregnant young girl who transforms into a ‘dybbuk,’ almost as an afterthought. There are dogs that bark to alert us to an emergency. There are corpses concealing themselves in cupboards. Is there anything that I’ve overlooked?
A layer could have been formed by an interfaith marriage between a Christian man and a Hindu woman, which resulted in irritated families. Another possibility is that Western countries used Mauritius as a repository for nuclear waste; Sam currently works at one of these facilities. These are only briefly mentioned. After a certain point, there is very little left. The only fear you have is that your time will be completely wasted.
