Modern Bollywood horror films tend to unintentionally induce humor, and this fourth installment in the popular Raaz franchise is no different.
Shaina (Kriti Kharbanda) and her husband Rehaan (Gaurav Arora) have just moved to Romania, the birth place of Count Dracula. While Shaina is hoping to start a family here, Rehaan is preoccupied with something, which the audience have to assume to be what the title suggests (a secret). He behaves like he has ants in his pants and refuses to help her with her mission despite of it being a tempting one. As one can predict, it doesn't take much time for Shaina to experience ghost- like occurrences in the mansion that they live in, and before soon, she is possessed with a so-called spirit. Rehaan regrets his recent rude behavior with his wife, and scrambles to make her sane again, with the help of psychometric, the only new and interesting topic in the whole film.
I will say this straight out: there's nothing new in the film, which we could have easily guessed, given that the title suggests pretty much everything it had in store for us. Life of a seemingly happy couple turns upside down when one of them gets possessed whereas the unaffected one tries to pull some strings and chants "Hail Mary!" along with that weirdo of an exorcist to make the person sane again. Typical story-line straight out of the horror genre shelf, with some tweaks here and there in dribs and drabs. Emraan Hashmi comes out of a possible fugue state and enters the scene halfway and convolutes the plot just so people could distinguish between the films in the franchise in future. Otherwise, no one would be able to tell the four films apart from each other, save the mercy of the non-recurring actors.
There are lots of problems (or errors, as I like to call them here) with the plot and the way the characters speak with each other. Of course, the CBFC was right when it accused the film of using f-words non-sparingly. The ghost in the film seems to be a real performer, providing glimpses of her repertoire while she is in the act of scaring other characters. Her diction is pretty narrow and words obviously hated by CBFC takes up half of it. The fact that the plot unfolds in an exotic place like Romania does not even start to help the film from slipping down the drain.
Hashmi is the only bearable person. Poor man's Karan Singh Grover, Gaurav Arora, looks like he came right out of the Love Games (2016) sets and pretended he was kicking up a fight with his co-star of that film, Patralakeha. No chemistry between any of the couples in the film, unless you consider contrived scenes involving foreplay as romance.
Hasmi's films are usually a one-time affair, but this one did not even get the songs right, which is a travesty.
BOTTOM LINE: Vikram Bhatt's "Raaz: Reboot" tries to reboot itself by manually going to the Windows start menu, clicking on the Power option, and then confirming Restart. The only problem is that before it can complete the action, it gets the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) error, which can only be rectified if you "shut down and then try again". Skip it!
Can be watched with a typical Indian family? NO
