Khamoshiyan

Plot

Kabir (Ali Fazal), is a novelist, whose failed career and relationship with Simran (Debina Bonnerjee) force him to move to Kashmir in search of an inspirational story. In Kashmir, Kabir stops at a guest house run by the beautiful but mysterious lady Meera (Sapna Pabbi). Meera is married to Jaidev (Gurmeet Chaudhary), who is confined to his bed. On his first night at the guest house, Kabir begins seeing strange apparitions. He also becomes attracted towards Meera. Meera, who is also falling for Kabir, refuses to go with him. Kabir finds out that Meera has not been out of the house for two years.

Kabir, now in love with Meera, tries to take her away from the house. While driving away, an evil force comes before their car and they meet with an accident. Curious, Kabir calls a tantrik after drugging Meera. The tantrik discovers an evil spirit in the house which attacks them. He claims that the spirit is of Jaidev, who is dead. Realization dawns upon Kabir, and he recalls Meera speaking on the phone in a man's voice and never seeing Jaidev in person. Kabir sneaks into Jaidev's room, only to find Jaidev sleeping. Furious with Kabir, Meera tells him to leave.

Kabir later returns to confront Meera. She reveals that she was involved in a hit and run case two years back and to evade imprisonment, she ran away to a small town in Kashmir, where she met Jaidev, a rich industrialist. She fell in love with him and they soon got married. One night Meera saw Jaidev performing a ritual slaughter and praying to the devil. Scared and shocked, Meera tried to run away but she was caught by Jaidev. In a struggle to stop her, Jaidev fell from the balcony and was paralyzed below the waist. Later Jaidev committed suicide and left a letter for Meera, mentioning that she will have to live in the house forever with his soul, and if she ever tried to run away, his lawyer was instructed to open a letter upon news of his disappearance, which will detail that Meera has killed him and was the culprit in the hit and run. Meera had to stay in the house with Jaidev's soul and delude the world that her husband is alive.

Kabir decides to steal the letter from the lawyer's office, however, he finds that there was no lawyer and Jaidev was bluffing. On knowing Jaidev's lie, Meera and Kabir plan to cremate Jaidev's body and set his spirit to rest. While they cremate his body, a laugh echoes in one of the rooms inside the house, and Jaidev smiles in a painting sadistically. To their surprise, Jaidev returns to haunt Meera and captures her in the painting. Kabir goes to the tantrik for help, who it turns out is also a spirit. The tantrik tells Kabir that the painting is merely a portal to the world of spirits. He gives Kabir holy water to spray on Jaidev and informs him that he doesn't have long to save Meera. After a lot of deadly struggles, Kabir drinks a drop of Jaidev's blood to get Jaidev's spirit to enter his body. He later drinks holy water, which makes Jaidev's evil spirit perish, setting Meera free.

Kabir is shown at a book launch for his latest novel, Khamoshiyan. Meera is also at the party but the two leave to spend some time alone together.

Cast

Development

The main cast of Gurmeet Choudhary, Ali Fazal and Sapna Pabbi was finalized in mid-2014. In May 2014, it was reported that Gurmeet Choudhary will be playing a negative role in the film. In June 2014, actress Sapna Pabbi signed a three-film deal with Vishesh Films and committed to work on the film as her first movie of the contract. In an interview, Fazal stated that he plays a romantic writer with grey shades in the film. Producer Mahesh Bhatt in an interview said "With a recipe of great music, state-of-art digital effects and a love story that brings back the intrigue of Mahal, it will repackage and raise the bar for the horror genre in Bollywood". Bhatt further added that the film has the potential of becoming a franchise. Ankit Tiwari was hired to compose the film's music.

Filming

The shoot of the film's first schedule began on 5 June 2014 and ended in August 2014. Shooting for the film's second schedule took place in Kashmir in September 2014 for 15 days. Due to a high flood in Kashmir, the producers had to shift the shoot to South Africa, as a replacement for Kashmir. On 21 October 2014, filming took place in Cape Town. The pre-climax was filmed at the forests of Legacy Estates in Cape Town.

Marketing

A video was created to announce the launch date of a trailer of Khamoshiyan. It was uploaded on the video sharing platform, YouTube. The video only featured background music and was used to introduce the characters, unveil the logo and the tagline. The film's music launch was held in a venue below ground level, making it the first underground music launch event for a Hindi film.

The filmmakers also announced the launch of a novel and a video game. The novel will feature the story of Khamoshiyan and two other stories penned by Vikram Bhatt – 1920 (film) and 1920: Evil Returns. On the other hand, the video game will feature different characters who will all unveil a dark secret and tell a different story as the player advances.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack of Khamoshiyan was composed by Ankit Tiwari, Jeet Gannguli, Navad Zafar & Bobby Imraan. The lyrics for the soundtrack were penned by Rashmi Singh and Sayeed Quadri.

The first single from the album, "Khamoshiyan", composed by Jeet Gannguli and crooned by Arijit Singh was released on 10 December 2014. The second single from the album, "Tu Har Lamha", composed by Bobby Imraan and sung by Arijit Singh, was released on 19 December 2014.

Additionally, the filmmakers purchased the rights to the song "Aayega Aane Wala" from the film Mahal (1949).

Critical response

Shakti Shetty of Mid-Day.com noted similarities between Khamoshiyan and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath, but commented, "the Indianisation doesn't really come out great." On the story's pacing, Shetty wrote, "If the first half was building up tension with sub-plots of mysteries, the second half does a tedious job of chronicling what happened in the past."