After RAAT, BHOOT, VAASTU SHAASTRA, DARNA MANA HAI AND DARNA ZAROORI HAI, Ram Gopal Varma returns with a much more subtle horror with a little drama and even a little humour.
Adit is a married chairman of mainstream company and is happily married with a woman named Ashwini. This happy couple has only one problem, the playboy Adit is having an affair with his secretary, Geeta.
Through many secret meetings, Geeta becomes pregnant and insists that Adit leave his wife and kids and come to join her and her soon to be born child.
Adit refuses and with a wave of fury and self-defence, accidentally kills Geeta. Helpless, he buries her in the back garden of the beach house they used to hang out in and returns home.
After his hasty return, Adit begins to notice odd happenings and suspicious that Geeta might not be dead, embarks on opening her grave once again. There he finds Geeta's furious ghost, bent on revenge!
To start off with, Darling is not an out and out Horror movie and in fact it is quite hilarious. The film is excellently paced and can easily settle itself among RGV's better films rather than his flop ones.
Geeta is killed off quite easily, a very necessary trait as the initial plot needs to unfold. RGV handles disturbing scenes both effectively and delicately, making you feel Adits anxiety and Geeta's fury while she tortures him in front of his wife, work colleagues and of course the investigating team of Geeta being missing.
This scenes are both funny and scary.
Among the many plus sides of Darling, the film comes with some falters. For example:
-When Adit comes into the office you begin to get annoyed and dissappointed as you wish the plot to take off with Geeta in every scene.
-Adit's assistant who is very inquisitive about Geeta, is very annoying and temporarily walking out of the room is the only way to stimulate your annoyance towards the actor.
-The film's pace slackens whenever the investigation team begins to come in to interrogate Adit in his office for the first time.
With only a few backdrops in the screenplay, Darling is a very competent racer on the Relay track, collecting while beginning to slacken a little bit.
The acting is of course one of the finest Bollywood has seen. Fardeen Khan, adopts his role like a skilled actor, making the audiences feel resentful to what the character has done and egging the furious Geeta spirit to continue to beat him.
Speaking of Geeta, Esha Deol is the real scene-stealer. Her fury and sadness is natural, her desperation commendable and her body language is profound. Save all of 2008's Best Negative Role Awards for Esha Deol everyone!
Isha Koppikar is a pleasant surprise, acting like the original intruding wife that she truly is.
The cinematography, in my opinion, could've been better as far as the overall look of the movie goes. As per usual, the cinematography ought to contain odd camera angles and quirky camera jerks at the very least, but such an aspect shouldn't effect the overall impact.
The sound is ok...but again it could've been better.
Overall, Darling is one of this year's finest films emerging a winner for all the people that've seen the film. It's business is restricted to multiplexes mainly, but even though Darling is a good film, the small cast will only take the film too far.
This film needs a serious word of mouth to make the Box-Office's Darling.
