Masand's Verdict: Hide and Seek, solid waste of time

ast: Arjan Bajwa, Purab Kohli, Sameer Kochhar

Director: Shawn Aranha

Slasher flicks don't usually require layered scripts or characters with much depth. A serviceable plot is enough, as long as the filmmaker can strum up enough tense moments to keep viewers suitably intrigued.

Hide & Seek, a Bollywood slasher film in the vein of I Know What You Did Last Summer, adheres faithfully to the genre requirement, and comes up with a flimsy plot about six friends, drugged and anonymously deposited inside a locked down shopping mall one night, 12 years after a fateful incident drew a wedge between them. Turns out a stalker in a Santa suit is responsible for this unhappy reunion, and now he's asking them to hide while he hunts them down and kills them one by one.

The group includes one recovering mental patient, his adoring sweetheart, a coke-snorting businessman, a movie actor, a supermodel, and a foul-mouthed politician's son who can't trust each other because of those incidents from their past. So they spend the most part of this film running through shopping aisles and hiding behind counters trying to escape the crazy Santa and each other.

Directed by first-timer Shawn Arranha, Hide & Seek struggles to create a real sense of fear or suspense, even though the idea of setting this film in a shopping mall is a clever one. Unfortunately, the film packs only a handful of jump-in-your-seat moments, and is let down completely by amateurish dialogue and insufferable acting from its ensemble. Purab Kohli, Arjan Bajwa and Sameer Kochar, in particular, ham it up in their respective roles, and to be fair the entire production doesn't come off looking much better than a school play.

What could have been a reasonably engaging thriller is ultimately neither scary nor entertaining. It is, in fact, a solid waste of time. I'm going with one-and-a-half out of five for debutant Shawn Arranha's Hide & Seek. Apart from the promising premise, there isn't a kind word I can think of for this one!