First up, sleeping late and waking up early doesn’t put you in the best of moods. But I woke up early on a Monday morning and was contemplating whether I should go for the screening that was happening in a couple of hours. Since it was a Monday, and I had nothing better to do in the morning, I thought “ah what the heck, you gotta try everything once in your life right?” And so I washed up, got dressed and set out to watch my first ever Bollywood horror movie in the cinema. Boy was I in for a surprise.
Hisss tells the story of a man, aptly named George, diagnosed with terminal brain cancer looking for a way to live. He learns about the mythology behind the snaked goddess who has some sort of essence/orb thingy inside her that can give him immortality. And so he sets out to capture her mate and bring him into the city to lure her out from the jungle. The snake goddess, played by Mallika Sherawat (who is pretty damn hot btw), comes into the city looking for her mate. Along the way she encounters abusive men and kills them as well. Irrfan Khan plays a detective who is on the trail of these mysterious murders that have been popping up around the city.
Firstly, I didn’t think it would be so soon but I think I’ve found a movie I hated more than The Last Airbender. Holy shit, this movie reeked of bad script writing, terrible editing, pacing, and I’m not even going to mention the terrible special effects- because you can tell a good story and have shitty effects, the movie would still be fine. But when you get a movie that has a bad story and bad effects, it just becomes so much worse. There is nothing redeeming about the movie. Just about every scene made me cringe- and it wasn’t in fear, it was because the movie was just terrible.
Let’s start with the premise, not very original- evil man who is dying looks for a way to save his life- but for what? He has no goals, no other motives in life, why does he want to live so badly? He goes so far as to kill other people for it! Then we have the snake goddess- you’d expect a goddess to be much more powerful than that. All she did was transform into a giant snake and eat bad guys. Not to mention she got tricked so easily in the last scene. And why did she take so long just to locate her lover? Goddesses are meant to be powerful, she gives the impression of a killer who took gained the ability to turn into a giant snake instead some higher deity that people worship. The cop- why is he so bad? He makes no progress in solving the case with his partner, and his mother-in-law just solves it for him towards the end of the movie. It’s just so bad! Future film makers, if you ever watch this movie- you know what not to do in your own movie.
Now I’m not saying I can make a better movie- that’s why I don’t make them in the first place. I just know what works in a movie and in this one, nothing works. It’s probably more entertaining to get crushed to death by a real python. At least you’d be genuinely scared. Hisss gets a 1/10.