1920: Evil Returns is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language supernatural horror film written by Vikram Bhatt and directed by Bhushan Patel. A quasi-sequel to the 2008 film 1920, and the second of the 1920 film series, it stars Aftab Shivdasani, Tia Bajpai, Vidya Malvade and Sharad Kelkar. The film is third in a series of quasi-sequels released under the Bhatt Banner including Raaz – The Mystery Continues, Murder 2, Jism 2, Jannat 2 and Raaz 3D each of which had nothing to do with their respective prequels, but somehow fell in the same genre following a similar story. The trailer was released on 28 September 2012. The film follows a reclusive writer who after bringing in an amnesiac woman to his house, goes through increasing disturbing and haunting events, which leads him to believe what he is experiencing is supernatural and the woman has something to do with it.
The film released on 2 November 2012 to mixed reception and fared better at the opening Box Office weekend (122.7 million Net.) as compared to any other releases that week except Skyfall (270 million Net.). U Dinesh Kumar, Professor at IIM Bangalore and his team worked with Ami Shah of IntelliAssist, the company that carried out the social media marketing for the film, and assessed Internet activities and campaigns with the case study later published by Harvard Business Publishing.
Contents
Plot
In 1920, Jaidev Verma is a famous poet who lives as a loner as Jaidev is unable to meet the love of his life, Smriti. Jaidev and Smriti got to know each other through an exchange of letters and slowly fell in love. While travelling at night, Smriti is attacked by a Possessed Badrinath, Smriti's driver. One of Smriti's employee visits and informs Jaidev that Smriti had died in an accident. Jaidev's sister, Karuna keeps Jaidev motivated. Jaidev finds an unconscious girl near a lake and brings her home. After gaining consciousness, she is unable to remember anything from her life except Jaidev's poems. Karuna becomes skeptical of her presence in the house and gets even more skeptical when an undertaker warns Jaidev and Karuna of an evil spirit inside the girl.
Jaidev is insistent on keeping the girl at home since Jaidev feels a connection with the girl. Jaidev names the girl as Sangeeta. Sangeeta experiences frightening phenomena, vomiting iron nails and seeing ghosts in her room. Jaidev takes Sangeeta to a hospital but the haunting continues. As the doctor is unable to treat Sangeeta, he suggests visiting another advanced hospital in Shimla. Jaidev and Sangeeta stay in a hotel on their way to Shimla. Outside the hotel, Sangeeta gets attacked by Possessed Badrinath, regains her memory and understands that she is Smriti. Sangeeta is possessed by the ghost and Jaidev brings Sangeeta to his house. Jaidev turns to the cemetery keeper, who warned about the possession earlier, for help. With the cemetery keeper's help Jaidev understands that Sangeeta is actually Smriti. Jaidev visits Smriti's address to find out the truth and discovers that Karuna had come to Smriti's house earlier, asking about Smriti. Jaidev returns home and finds Karuna's body hanging in the forest with suicide notes around.
From Karuna's suicide notes, Jaidev learns that his best friend, Amar, who envied Jaidev's success, had a sexual relationship with Karuna. When Amar discovered that Jaidev loved Smriti, he stole one of the love letters to find Smriti's address. Karuna confronts Amar about the letter. But he blackmails Karuna and she hides everything from Jaidev. Amar went to meet Smriti, posing as Jaidev, and took Smriti to his new residence which is under construction in Shimla. Eventually Smriti understands Amar's deceit and confronts him. Amar confesses his plan to Smriti while assaulting her. Smriti pushed Amar away and he fell to his death. Smriti and one of the employees hid Amar's corpse inside his residence. Amar's spirit is now possessing Smriti. Jaidev burns Karuna's corpse.
Cast
Aftab Shivdasani as Jaidev Verma
Tia Bajpai as Smriti/Sangeeta
Vidya Malvade as Karuna Verma
Sharad Kelkar as Amar (evil Spirit)
Vicky Ahuja as Bankimlal
Sanjay Sharma as Bhola
Tarakesh Chauhan as the doctor in the town hospital
Naresh Sharma as the driver of a horse carriage
Yogesh Tripathi as Chand
Falguni Rajani as Smriti's landlord
Soundtrack
The music for the film was composed by Chirantan Bhatt and the lyrics written by Shakeel Azmi, Junaid Wasi & Manoj Yadav. The music got positive reviews from critics.
Critical reception
Renuka Vyavahare of Times of India gave it 3 stars. "1920 gives you the creeps...watch it." said ToI. Rediff Movies said "1920 Evil Returns is yet another needless horror film. It's cold and bland." and gave it 1 star. Roshni Devi of Koimoi gave it 2 stars. "Watch it only if you're desperate for some uninspiring horror. Give it a rest otherwise." wrote Roshni Devi. Social Movie Rating site MOZVO gave it a rating of 2.3 putting it in 'Below Average' category. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave it 2.5 stars.
Box office
1920 – Evil Returns had a decent opening weekend where it collected around ₹115 million (US$1.2 million) nett. The film had a good first week and collected ₹160 million (US$1.7 million) nett. It had collected around ₹45.0 million (US$470,000) nett in its second week taking its total to ₹205 million (US$2.1 million) nett. It finished at ₹229 million (US$2.4 million) in the domestic market.
Sequel
The reasonable success of 1920 – Evil Returns prompted producer Vikram Bhatt to plan another sequel. "I will be making another sequel to 1920. We are working on the script right now. It is too early to talk about it as we are developing the concept for it", Vikram said in an interview. It was also revealed that the film would not be in 3D. The sequel to the movie was later named as 1920 London, and released on 6 May 2016.