re:mote voices

Title: Darna Mana Hai [Fear Is Forbidden]
Cast: Sameera Reddy, Antara Mali, Sohail Khan, Sanjay Kapoor
Director: Prawal Raman

Darna Mana Hai is an Indian horror film, the title translated as Fear Is Forbidden. The film is somewhat patchy, constructed as it is, essentially, from a series of short films. The core of which perhaps mimics something of the Hollywood genre – a group of teenagers on a road trip to Goa. On the way their min-bus breaks down. Luckily they spot a house in the woods and decide to stay the night there. Settling down they build a fire and start to tell each other horror stories. Over the course of the film each of the characters decides to go for a walk in the woods by themselves – never to return! This is straight forward in itself, but with each of the stories the group tell, the film moves into the story as a short film.

It is with these shorts that the film gets into particularly bizarre territory. From my point of view I’m not sure to what degree the oddities of this film are a cultural thing. Or is this film just as bizarre as it seems? The stories on the whole don’t especially seem to follow a theme, other than they are supposed to be scary. Over the course of the film we get little stories that relate to the characters and their situation. Half the stories involve other people driving when they encounter something scary. It can perhaps be said that each of the stories suggests something about the person telling it, but on the whole the film hits such a baffling level that it is difficult to second-guess its intent.

The films at times feel as though they have been made by a variety of people – given that they play with a range of styles – but director Prawal Raman puts the whole film together. The title sequence has the feel of a Bond film, the core story comes off like a Scream spin-off. over the sequence of stories we have drivers who encounter ghosts, a man who can stop time and a woman who encounters a man selling magic apples. Despite the intent to scare the viewer the collection verges into increasingly absurd territory – perhaps owing more to Twilight Zone type material. In one story a man stops at a hotel for the night, but as a smoker he encounters problems with the health conscious proprietor. Then there is the teacher who canes a girl every day because she never does her homework – then she does her homework! These scenarios are cranked up, while this isn’t your Bollywood song and dance film, it does take the melodrama to new heights. Darna Mana Hai is utterly surreal, even if it is not especially scary.