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With recent Hindi movie Stree doing huge business in the box office, author explores Stree and other Bollywood horror films with vindictive female ghosts.
With the recent Hindi movie Stree doing huge business at the box office, the author explores Stree and other Bollywood horror films with vindictive female ghosts.
“Main apne maut ka badla zarur lungi… mere katilo ko saja dungi… main vapis zarur aaungi.”
If you are a frequent viewer of Bollywood horror movies then this dialogue must to be very familiar to you all, with minute verifications here and there, it is uttered by almost every female ghost possible or their actions do all the talking.
Female ghosts in the Bollywood movies are always very vengeful. Almost all the ghosts vehemently want revenge for the social injustice. The question over here is, why do women really have to go to this extent for their rights and to get justice? Why can’t they get it without being so vengeful and ‘Khoon ki pyasi.’
So with this, here is the list of 5 Bollywood movies with vengeful female ghosts who prove that even after dying women have to take extreme measures to achieve justice.
You must be living under the rock if you still haven’t watched Stree directed by Amar Kaushik. Its a movie which deals with the concepts of horror, comedy compiled with a social message. Its the story of a prostitute who was used, yet disrespected by the people. She was separated from her lover by the chauvinistic men of the society. To avenge this, she died and became a chudail.
She takes her revenge on village men by threatening them in a very unique way. The story of Stree is beautifully crafted to give a very strong message – the need to respect women. To make people understand this, stree (the ghost) took violent steps after her death, which is disheartening. It reveals the brutal reality of society’s double standards towards women, specifically the prostitutes.
Raaz, directed by Vikram Bhatt was a well acclaimed movie of its time. It revolved around the lives of Sanjana Dhanraj (Bipasha Basu) and Aditya Dhanraj (Dino Morea) who was attacked by an evil spirit. As you might have guessed it by now, the spirit is a vengeful lady Malini (Malini Sharma). She wants revenge from Aditya as she died because of him who used her for his physical needs.
As we live in a male dominant, patriarchal society, Malini couldn’t take her revenge when alive. This apparently made Aditya think that ‘hell yeah! I am free of any danger,’ but guess what? Malini comes back to take her revenge as a ghost. According to movies women as ghosts are more powerful and confident… Now, how’s that revenge patriarchy?
Talaash was an underrated movie but it was one of its kind. This psychological horror film directed by Reema Kagti revolved around the life of a police officer, Surjan Singh Shekhawat (Aamir Khan). It showed his internal struggles, a criminal case and the mysterious prostitute Rosie (Kareena Kapoor).
Finally, it is shown in the end that Rosie was a spirit who wanted to take her revenge from three men who left her to die in the middle of the road. But before claiming her first revenge, she waited for three years. The point over here is that Rosie is vengeful, and she tried to get justice after her death, because who are we kidding… we all know that prostitutes in our society are puppets in the hands of men. Until alive these women have no rights.
This movie directed by B R Ishara is about how Asha’s spirit (played by Moon Moon Sen) possessed Aarthi (Farah Naaz) who was the girlfriend of Raju (Rajesh Khanna). This step of possessing Aarthi by Asha’s spirit is taken to get her revenge against those who took part in ruining her life. Basically, she was killed and she wanted revenge from those people. Unfortunately that was done by harming other woman and using her for the same.
Bhoot, the spine-chilling horror movie directed by Ram Gopal Varma revolved around the lives of Swati (Urmila Matondkar) and Vishal (Ajay Devgn). They shifted into an apartment and soon Swati was possessed by the spirit of the previous resident Manjeet (Barkha Madan) who apparently committed suicide and died. It is revealed in the end that the caretaker’s son tried to abuse Manjeet and amidst the struggle to save herself she fell from the apartment. So Manjeet’s spirit decided to take revenge from her wrongdoers, because in the system that we live, getting justice for assault is not an easy task for a woman, its almost next to impossible.
With this we can draw a conclusion that apparently becoming a ghost and taking revenge is a better way for women to get justice for all the abuses, assaults and discrimination rather than living and trying to get justice. She is either killed, suppressed or her voice is never heard in this man’s world. At least from the movies it appears that the spirit world is definitely all about the woman power.
I read, I write, I dream and search for the silver lining in my life. Being a student of mass communication with literature and political science I love writing about things that bother me. Follow read more...
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