I scare easy. Ridiculously easy. I flinch audibly when I watch Exorcist III, The Shining keeps me awake all night every time I watch it, and Rosemary's Baby is single-handedly responsible for much jumpiness. And there's some childhood trauma associated with both Steven Spielberg's [Images] Poltergeist and the Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay 1988 epic, Veerana.

Ram Gopal Varma too has toyed with my internal boogeyman, with Bhoot and standout sequences in Raat and Kaun.

Therefore it is with much gratitude that I smile at Ramu for Darling, a film that flits between a few genres but doesn't really commit to any one track -- particularly the horror bit. It's got a macabre plot but no worries, I'm going to sleep soundly tonight. Thanks, boss.

Gleaned in extremely basic idea from the 1945 David Lean comedy Blithe Spirit -- in turn adapted from Noel Coward's 1941 play of the same name -- RGV's Darling is the story of a smitten, relentless spectre.

Blithe was all about a married man being haunted by his first wife. Until his second wife dies and the poor man -- Rex Harrison, wishing he was stuck in a Spanish downpour instead -- is now haunted by both his spiteful ex-wives. The dialogue is hilarious, sarcastic enough to sharpen an expletive against. Quite the lark.

Ramu, of course, takes a different tack. Darling is the story of Aditya Soman (Fardeen Khan), more or less happy in his one-son marriage to Ashwini (Isha Koppikar). Except he can't resist a bit on the side, thus enters Geeta (Esha Deol [Images]), a willing secretary who looks good poured into a pair of denims. And so all is merry and philandering until -- and please, this isn't a SPOILER if you've seen the promos -- Geeta dies in a scene directly reminiscent of yet another RGV production, My Wife's Murder, but gamely decides that mere death isn't enough to do her and Aditya part. Begin the haunting.

We're all aware RGV can do a great job with both horror and comedy, but mixing the two -- not to mention folding in a few yolks of almost Balaji-level melodrama -- isn't the most judicious of decisions. Longtime Ramu fans will find a few chuckles for sure, especially with some casually macabre slices of dark humour thrown to the supporting characters: a singsong letch, a Crime Branch Inspector with a 007-movie hangover, and his ominously silent assistant, with a glare like a Rottweiler.

Speaking of glares, the entire Esha Deol character, and the scares around her, centres on a striking pair of eyes. Deol, while at her scariest when defiantly staring up as a corpse, does well in Darling, with a piercing and considerably disarming gaze. She walks all over Fardeen's life, from almost turning his anniversary make-out session into a threesome, to insinuating completely roguish behaviour by popping up under his desk. Her character is a straight one, and Esha somehow embraces the casual nature of the film, her winks and smirks doing far better than the completely overdone background score wrapped over predictable scares.

Isha Koppikar [Images] too, in fact, does well. She's mostly credible in a film that's pretty minimalist, except in terms of cinematography -- if directors have phases, then this is Ramu's Shot-Composition Period, with vivid unusual frames constantly on the move. So yeah, Isha does okay when she's playing the middle-class wife, but her sporadic lapses into English are a trifle Salmanic: the uncalled-for accent sticks out.

The basic flaw lies with the film's leading man. I'm pretty convinced Fardeen reads his Hindi lines off a phonetic teleprompter. There's nothing wrong with his pronunciation per se, but his delivery is so wooden you can almost see splinters near his lips. Fardeen, unfortunately, happens to be this film's flabby focal point, with high histrionics required in every scene. Darling has a double-chinned hero trying hard to look scared, failing badly enough to actually make us long for Shriek Queen Urmila. Not good.

The film's plot, as said, borrows from Blithe Spirit but only in, well, spirit, (sorry, really) deciding to wing it soon enough and turn severely dramatic. And just because it works as a five-line summary doesn't mean it has enough meat to be turned into a feature film. Darling works in fits and spurts, a pretty watchable film, but with the flavour of a short, made-for-TV movie. Sure it has its moments, but there's not much you're going to remember when you walk out of the theatre, and horror enthusiasts aren't likely to marvel over much of it.

Just another Friday at the movies, Darling.

Rediff Rating: