Review: Darling is RGV ki comic-horror movie

THE PLOT CHANGES: Director Ram Gopal Varma twists all the cliches in Hindi horror movies.

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Cast Fardeen Khan, Esha Deol, Isha Koppikar

Direction Ram Gopal Varma

Exactly one week after delivering that dead duck of a film, Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, the director shows up with Darling, something of a comic-horror film in which Fardeen Khan finds himself being stalked by the ghost of his mistress who died in a scuffle with him.

Esha Deol plays the ghost in question, who returns to complete some unfinished business with her cad of a boss who got her pregnant and then refused to leave his wife for her. Scared out of his wits, Fardeen can’t come clean to his wife Isha Koppikar, and doesn't know how to get those pesky cops off his back.

What's interesting about Darling is the manner in which director Ram Gopal Varma turns around the cliches you normally associate with ghosts in Hindi films: they’re mysterious, you don't see them too often, they appear in a fog-like smoke, they don't speak too much. But the ghost in Darling is a yackety-yack bitter ex who smacks him around, disturbs his love-making session with his wife, sobs in his living room, and calls him a bastard at least fifty times in the film.

The film’s best moments are the ones in which Esha Deol's ghost shows up at all the wrong times to make Fardeen's life a living hell. Like the time she shows up under his table while he’s dictating a letter to his secretary. Or the time she shows up in hospital when Fardeen Khan and his wife visit a friend recovering from an accident. Or then the time she shows up in his office when he's being interrogated by the police.