Updated On: 21 February, 2020 07:03 AM IST | Mumbai | Mayank Shekhar
What does a ship have to do with ghosts? If you consider a 2011 news-item, about a cargo ship that drifted and ran aground on Mumbai beach, you'll know exactly where the idea for this film came from.

A still from Bhoot Part One: The Haunted Ship

The first frame/slate in this film thanks director Ram Gopal Varma. The reference I guess is obvious. It's do with Varma's 2003 Hindi horror film of the same name, that I suspect remains unsurpassed in Bollywood still for multiple reasons. For one, that it lifted the otherwise low-investment, high returns genre into a proper mainstream space, starring Ajay Devgn in the lead role. There were no songs in the film, of course.
But beyond that it sent shivers down audiences' spines, chiefly for of its incredibly realistic setting — a regular apartment in Andheri's Versova/Lokhandwala/Oshiwara neighbourhood, hit by an otherworldly spirit, as the hero goes about his normal day, travelling up and down a typically rickety Mumbai elevator.