Scream Stream: Revisiting the mysterious magic of just the first half of Ek Thi Daayan

Has it ever happened to you that you get sold on the first half of the film and only those sequences make you revisit the film? That's Ek Thi Daayan for me. The film released in 2013 has all supernatural elements including a witch, a magician, hell down under and more. Ek Thi Daayan marked the directorial debut of Kannan Iyer and the script is penned by Vishal Bhardwaj along with Mukul Sharma.

The first half of the film includes the childhood sequences of Bejoy Charan Mathur aka Bobo (Emraan Hashmi), while the younger version was played by Vishesh Tiwari. That's when Konkona Sen Sharma as Diana aka Daayan makes an appearance as a mysterious woman who Bobo and his sister Misha believe to be a witch. The first half sets the bar of the film very high with spine chilling sequences blended with dark comedy. It also screams of having a modern touch given to folklore but making it look thoroughly convincing.

The first half is based on the short story Mobius Trips penned by the late Mukul Sharma, father of Konkona. Maybe that's why the actor just aced the role and how! In Ek Thi Daayan, a single father Mr Mathur (Pavan Malhotra) and his two kids Bobo and Misha (Sara Arjun) live in a building that is no less than a haunted house. Even Bobo believed that the dead lived under the building.

Out of nowhere, Diana (Konkona) appears in their lives leaving Mr Mathur mesmerised and Bobo disgusted. From the first meet, he believes that she is a witch who has come to kidnap him and his sister. But that doesn't affect his father as he is keen to make her his life partner.

Many instances prove Bobo right including when a lizard attacks him and it crawls to a room turning into Diana. She even has long hair which she plaits neatly and according to many believes that's where the power of a witch lies. Ek Thi Daayan justified the title amazingly and all credit goes to the part which was adapted from Mukul Sharma's short story.

Konkona looked bewitching from her first appearance in the film. Her silent sequences were scarier than the jump scare moments shown in the film. The actor oozed out the mystery and looked the part in the way Daayan has been described in the film and also in the book.

Another character that creates a mystery in the film is that of Lisa Dutt played by Kalki Koechlin. However, it comes across as a little more forceful than the characters of her co-stars.

But the film reaches a major disappointing point towards the climax making it a darker and blah witch and wizard show. The whole film reaches a letdown with the execution of the present sequences including Emraan Hashmi, Huma Qureshi and Kalki's characters.

Now that it's available on OTT, Ek Thi Daayan is a film that can be revisited for the first half and discovers more new details which just makes those sequences hauntingly beautiful.

The performances by everyone is amazing in the film including Emraan, Konkona, Huma, Kalki and also Vishesh Tiwari who plays the young Bobo.

The Murder actor just gets better throughout the film and slipped amazingly into the skin of his character. Just like Konkona and Vishesh, he is also the actor to watch out for in Ek Thi Daayan.

Now, Emraan is one such actor who has done maximum horror films in Bollywood. There's something about the horror films he does that has something unique which pulls him towards the genre.

Meanwhile, Ek Thi Daayan is straight out of a children's horror book and made in such a way that even adults' minds will keep going on thinking, "How did that just happen?"

The execution-style is inspired by filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and Alfred Hitchcock. But when it comes to a book to screenplay adaptation, they tried hard to have it like Neil Gaiman and Roald Dahl.

You can catch Ek Thi Daayan on Netflix and Disney+ Hotstar.