Jhaad Phoonk Review: Verma's Slow-Burn Horror Drama

The film centers on a family caught between modernity and the rituals their elders refuse to abandon. Without spoiling the turns, the narrative follows a household that calls upon a traditional healer to address a disturbance that medicine and logic cannot explain. Yashpal Sharma plays the grounded, skeptical presence - the sort of man who trusts what he can see - while Harsh Rajput's character occupies a more ambiguous space, pulled between duty and dread. Kolhapure is the matriarch anchoring the family's spiritual conscience, and Touqeer is the youngest, most vulnerable member of the unit, the one around whom the film's tension coils tightest.

The plot resists clean resolution. Verma is less interested in explaining the supernatural than in letting it fester, and that refusal to tie a neat bow is both the film's greatest strength and its most alienating quality.

Let's start with the performances, because they carry this film. Padmini Kolhapure is extraordinary - she doesn't raise her voice to command a room; she lowers it, and the room leans in. There's a lifetime of unspoken grief in her eyes, and Verma, to his credit, holds the camera on her face long enough for us to read it. Sumbul Touqeer, best known to television audiences, makes an assured leap to the big screen, bringing a tremulous physicality to a role that could easily have become a scream-queen cliché. Yashpal Sharma is reliably steady, and Harsh Rajput does solid work with a character whose loyalties shift just enough to keep us guessing.

Technically, the film is confident. The sound design is the real star - creaking floorboards, low chants, and silence used as a weapon. Verma understands that the scariest thing in a haunted house is often the moment before something happens, and he milks those moments with genuine skill. The color palette is deliberately drained, as though the world itself has been bled of warmth, and the camerawork favors tight, claustrophobic framings that make the haveli feel like a trap.

Where the film falters is in its pacing and its script. At no point is the runtime announced, and you feel that ambiguity in the second half, when the narrative circles its central mystery more than once. A subplot involving village politics never quite integrates with the supernatural core, and the dialogue occasionally lapses into platitudes about faith and fear that undercut the intelligence of the direction. There's a conversation about belief versus reason that plays like a debate club exercise rather than an organic argument between people who love each other.

But here's the thing: when Jhaad Phoonk works, it really works. There's a sequence in the third act - no spoilers - where Verma cuts between a ritual and a conversation happening in another room, and the cross-cutting builds dread so effectively that my pulse actually quickened. This is a director who has thought deeply about how fear operates on screen, even if he hasn't fully solved the puzzle of how to keep momentum for the entire duration.

Pros:

• Padmini Kolhapure delivers a quietly commanding performance that elevates every scene she's in.
• Sumbul Touqeer proves she can carry emotional weight on the big screen.
• Exceptional sound design and claustrophobic camerawork create genuine atmosphere.
• Verma trusts the audience to sit with ambiguity rather than spoon-feeding explanations.

Cons:

• The second half sags under repetitive narrative beats.
• A village-politics subplot feels disconnected from the main story.
• Some dialogue on faith and reason trends toward the preachy.

Jhaad Phoonk is not a perfect film, but it's an interesting one - a horror drama that treats faith with intellectual seriousness and its performers with real respect. Verma has made something that will frustrate as many viewers as it haunts, and in an era of interchangeable jump-scare factory products, that friction is welcome. Go in expecting atmosphere over adrenaline, and you'll likely leave unsettled in the best possible way. If you're the kind of viewer who checks the locks twice after a movie, this one is for you.