Vikram Bhatt’s horror film 1920 doesn’t leave you dreary. But it does scare you enough to have a few perspiring, restless hours when you hit the bed at night.

The film derives its title from the year it’s set in, when huge mansions stood tall on the suburbs of Mumbai and horse-drawn carts plied on dusty grounds carrying groovy men in suits and women in Victorian gowns and hats. Sadly, there aren’t any buxom ladies in tight corsets here.

Rajneesh Duggal plays Arjun, an architect, and Adah Sharma plays his catholic wife, Lisa. The couple, married despite parental displeasure, arrives at a haveli that the suave architect plans to convert into a hotel as his big project. The only trouble is – the haveli is haunted by a spirit that eventually possesses Lisa. Even as the girl transforms from a beautiful bride to a shrunken zombie that talks in numerous voices and levitates in bed, the guy doesn’t run away but stands beside her, his love unshaken, until he finds a way to exorcise her of the evil force.

Plotwise, ‘1920’ doesn’t offer anything remarkably novel or terrifying. It abounds with clichés that collage any typical horror film – a large, empty and dimly lit mansion with huge portraits staring down gloomily at its audience. Or its rich architecture that sparkles through the shifting shadows. It is horrible as a lantern-carrying housekeeper with mysterious facial expressions.

Although this, the film works to an extent because Vikram Bhatt holds it tight until the very climax.

The film also works because its actors, Rajneesh Duggal and Adah Sharma, deliver convincing performances in appropriately suited roles. Adah’s blanched facial appearance particularly makes her well suited to play a possessed girl. Raj Zutsi as the sullen priest is too stilted. The music is quite evocative.