13B

Writer-director Vikram K. Kumar’s urban ghost story borrows liberally from The Amityville Horror and plunders Asian horror tropes, but adds an original twist—a haunted Indian soap opera. Manu (Madhavan) exhausts his assets to buy a spacious apartment for his extended family, choosing to ignore the classic signs of a possessed dwelling: milk instantly sours, holy pictures can’t be hung, dogs recoil at the threshold. The execution is rough, from the washed-out cinematography to a clichéd scary score, but 13B delivers some genuine jolts. And no, there are no Bollywood musical production numbers for gyrating ghouls.