Ram Gopal Varma: PHOONK-2 is the scariest film ever!

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In spite of PHOONK's hit status quite a few people say that it's not a scary film and there is a reason for that. Scare can be of two kinds where one is of a kind which scares you due to a completely helpless situation you catch yourself in, and the other which just plain scares your senses. BHOOT falls in the 2nd category whereas PHOONK falls in the 1st category.

The reason for this is by the time the story of PHOONK reaches a certain point the character of the father looses his fear and is not scared anymore as the concern for his daughter overcomes his fear and as it is through the father's eyes that the audience are watching the story unfold they too loose their fear. The scare in PHOONK is meant to create an internal fear in the so-called non-believers and atheists and to make them question themselves on what they would do if they are caught in such a situation. To that extent it serves its purpose and it is not an obvious and straight in the face scary film like BHOOT and that's where the tag line of PHOONK "It's superstition till it happens to you" came from.

When Milind Gadagkar the writer of PHOONK came up with the idea of PHOONK-2 the opening sequence itself made me jump up in my seat. The moment I read the entire script I was convinced that he should direct the film as I was amazed at the clarity he had in detailing of the story. I also decided to make the film in 3 languages. In Hindi it is going to be called PHOONK -2. In Tamil BOMMAI-2 because PHOONK has been dubbed in Tamil as BOMMAI and in Telugu it is going to be called AAVAHAM meaning "The Possession".

If the entire PHOONK story was about how this evil woman who practices black magic was bent upon torturing and killing a little girl in order to make her father suffer and how the father after desperately trying every measure manages to get a tantrik who kills the evil woman, PHOONK-2 starts off with the spirit of the evil woman coming back from the dead and brutally murdering the tantrik.

What Rajiv's family in PHOONK-2 face is much more evil than what they faced in PHOONK since the woman comes back as a ghost and their only saviour the tantrik of PHOONK is killed in the very first scene itself, thereby making the family that much more vulnerable and the film that much more terrifying.

Also PHOONK-2 falls in the 2nd category of scary films that is of the BHOOT variety where its intention is as plain and simple as to just scare the audience's pants off.

When I saw the 1st cut of what Milind showed me of the film, I told him that it's not only far better than PHOONK but I think it is the scariest film Bollywood has ever made and it is miles above all my so-called scary films like BHOOT etc and I mean every word of it from my spine onwards.... Chilling!