Film Creature 3D is worthy to watch once for experiencing the first Indian 3D creature. !!

The 3D in the title is positioned such that it draws your eye instantly, and you know why as soon as the movie begins. The Creature, a scaly, long-tailed lizard-type with a semi-human face and green eyes and a noisy growl, swishes its tail in your face, just where your 3D dark glasses end: first generation viewers of creature-cum-horror films may well start.

 

Bipasha Basu’s Creature is the sort of horror-thriller that fails at both thrilling and scaring you. There is not a single moment in this movie that incites fear. For a long time, all you see is a creature’s tail in 3D. Meanwhile, there’s another creature at work – Bipasha Basu. The camera feasts on her figure and after a point, seriously, you can’t differentiate Bipasha from the creature!

 

The first half of the movie establishes its lead hero, the above-mentioned creature – or as the director puts it, ‘Brahmrakshas’. It’s only in the second half that the movie picks pace, bringing around an array of human characters to the fore as the danger looms large. While some try saving lives, others are busy blaming everybody else. In real life, many a time it’s not the predator that kills. It’s fear that does. Director Vikram Bhatt brings that out well. He also gets in a dose of humour in murky situations by playing with fear and filmy dialogues.

 

Creature is a typical Vikram Bhatt’s creation. It’s a tale of the enterprising Ahana (Bipasha Basu) who launches her new hotel Glendale Forest Lodge in the hilly terrains of Himachal Pradesh. After her father commits suicide, she decides to sell her property and shifts base to Himachal Pradesh to start once again. She bumps into Kunal (debutant actor Imran Abbas) who, according to the script, is a popular author but instead, shows strange fondness towards guitars and humming songs. Just when Ahana thinks things are going well, one of her hotel guests is killed by Bhramrakshas – who’s neither an animal nor human.

 

Like every adventure film, when the hero and heroine get trapped there comes a rescuer. In Vikram’s 1920, Raj Zutsi played the savior in the form of a chief priest. Here, Sadana (Mukul Dev), professor of zoology, comes to Ahana and Kunal’s salvage. But unluckily, like Raj Zutshi’s character, he too gets killed. It leaves Ahana to single-handedly combat the creature with an antique rifle and seven bullets dipped in the holy waters of Lord Brahma’s temple in Pushkar, Rajasthan.

 

Filmed in 3D but hardly justifying the technology, Creature is visually unexciting. Vikram employs all the usual horror tropes like creaking doors, fog-filled frames and a gruesome background score. What works for Creature is the cinematography. Praveen Bhatt uses out-of-the-box camera angles to create horror.

 

As far as acting perspective, Bipasha Basu does hard work to justify her character. Debutant Imran is OK. Mukul, as we all know, is a talented actor. He deserved a better director and a bigger role.

 

The plot is inadvertently hilarious, involving a fearless young woman who turns up in the forest to start a lodge, loads of extras playing chefs and petrified guests, and an alleged award-winning writer. The coming of the creature leaves a trail of dead bodies, but instead of running, our heroine declares ‘I am not going’. Drum roll.

 

Of course everything leads to the face-off between the creature and the girl, with a little bit of help from the guy. Bhatt bungs in a ‘praacheen mandir’ and an old rifle and bullets dunked in `holy’ water: this is Bollywood, how can we do without magic?

 

On the whole, it is worthy to watch once for experiencing the first Indian 3D creature.