Aatma: The Ghost (Blu-ray Review)
Director
Deepak RamsayRelease Date(s)
2006 (May 12, 2026)Studio(s)
Parallel Films/Tulsi Ramsay Productions (Mondo Macabro)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B
Review
After a bit of a break, the Ramsay House of Horror came back swinging with this schizo but fun Evil Dead meets The Exorcist flick. Produced by Tulsi Ramsay and directed by his son Deepak, Aatma is deceptively simple for a Bollywood Horror. As with most Ramsay films, there is a cold open where an exorcist banishes an evil spirit from a woman in a sequence that’s frankly up there with anything in these new Evil Dead reboot sequels. We’re then into the real story. Dr. Aman is a dedicated doctor in a small hospital, he’s training his fun-loving sister-in-law Aarti how to be a reliable hospital worker, and he’s a stern taskmaster. He and his wife are celebrating their one-year anniversary and on the night of that special day, a strange man comes knocking on their door at one o’clock in the morning. When Aman inexplicably answers, he’s told, that no matter what, he has to tell the truth about an upcoming postmortem/autopsy report he will administer. The next day he’s also visited upon by a menacing couple, Shiva and Laila, along with Khurana aka Mr. Lawyer who tell him if he doesn’t lie about the report and say it was “natural causes” bad things will happen to him and his wife. Sure enough, upon arrival at work, he learns he is in fact scheduled to administer an autopsy and it’s in fact the strange man himself, Avinash, who visited him the night before. Deciding to tell the truth, he gets a call by a local businessman, and the dead man’s brother, Vikram who has kidnapped his wife and if he doesn’t falsify the document, he’s going to kill her. So, he falsifies the document and incurs the wrath of Avinash.
It turns out, we find out in a flashback, Avinash is a master of the black arts and also cheated on his wife. While hanging out with his brother and his friends, he gets an exotic dance from his mistress Laila (who seems to be everyone’s mistress there, except for maybe Mr. Lawyer) and while distracted Vikram poisons his drink with a terrifying poison that liquifies your throat. Vikram does this to take his brother’s estate with plans to split the spoils with his pals. And that’s when things get weird.
Avinash makes good on his threat and swears revenge on Aman be possessing Neha and will stay in her body unless they can bring Vikram and his goons to justice, which Aman immediately attempts to do through legal systems, confrontation and the like, to no avail. And all this doesn’t make much sense honestly, because every night at 1am Avinash leaves her body, freeing Neha, and kills one of the conspirators in elaborate ways. So really, he could have just said, “hey doc, since you eff’ed up the paperwork I’m going to borrow your wife for the next week to be a canister for my soul and I’m going to kill some folks.” And maybe Neha and Aman would have been cool with that, because Avinash is pretty efficient and good at the murders; throughout this film he’s getting his revenge on his own—justice served. But you know what? It wouldn’t have been a fun take on Evil Dead meets The Exorcist if that happened, so scratch that.
Aatma is a wonderful throwback to those mid-80, early 90s Ramsay flicks. It’s tight, there isn’t too much extraneous side story to get in the way, although Aarti has a quick excursion setting up her being adorable along, with her boyfriend, a moralistic cop who plays heavy at the end, as a badass. The song and dances actually play out diegetically, as part of the story of the film, instead of being what-the-huh? and the scary bits are scary in a great Evil Dead way. This really could have been marketed as an Indian Evil Dead film and I don’t think anyone would have said boo. It even has a solid ending. Saved one of the best for last, those Ramsays did.
The video is presented 1080/24p at 2.35:1 aspect ratio and restored in 4K from original film negatives and it looks great. Being one of the newer of the Ramsay films, it doesn’t suffer from storage damage and features nice color representation, good detail and a solid transfer. Sound is a Hindi DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 with English subs and sounds good as well. Extras include an unstructured and rambling optional intro from the boxset entitled Bollywood Nightmares with Weng’s Chop Magazine’s Bollywood Horror expert Tim Paxton, it’s not my favorite of his intros—maybe he did this one last for the boxset and ran out of steam. There’s also a trailer for the film and a good long Mondo Macabro Library Promotional Video running 13 minutes that gives you an idea of the scope of this boutique’s offerings.
- Todd Doogan