Architect Atul Kulkarni is furiously at work on his laptop in the middle of the night. His nine-year-old daughter, unable to sleep, is playing in the same room. As she accidentally drops a bottle of ink, her father shouts at her to stay put where she is while he rushes to clean the mess. As he turns around, he spies a child’s ink-dipped footprints leading to the next room. In a moment of horror, he sees his daughter standing in a corner of one room and also walking away into the other room — all at once. He is left speechless. It is this one scene that stays with the viewer long after the curtains have come down on Gauri-The Unborn.

A supernatural thriller with a social message, Gauri begins well and manages to arrest one’s attention. The child inexplicably being pushed by an invisible force at the school race, the family (Atul, Rituparna Sengupta and child actor Rushita) going to their long-abandoned ancestral home for a holiday, the mystery of the broken windowpane that can never be repaired, an unexplained presence in the house — the suspense builds up, scene by scene.

What also works for this small-budget thriller is that, being just under two hours long, Gauri doesn’t waste time in identifying the source of the family’s torment — the spirit of the foetus that the couple had aborted early in their marriage and which has now come back to claim their daughter.

But the pressure of catering to an audience bred on Bollywood cliches does begin to tell on Gauri towards the middle of the narrative as it slowly degenerates into a typical Hindi horror flick — brazen, illogical and sometimes even funny. Moreover, the producers would have done well to spruce up the special effects, which border on the amateurish on more than one occasion.

Of the performances, Atul Kulkarni’s is top notch. Rituparna Sengupta, in her first substantial Bollywood role since Main Meri Patni Aur Woh (2005), turns in a commendable act. Portraying the role of a mother protecting one child and recoiling from the other, the National Award winner almost matches the intensity of her co-actor’s performance.

Young Rushita appears too precocious at times — a common Bollywood affliction — with most of the dialogues penned for her doing nothing to dispel the notion. Anupam Kher, the biggest name in the cast, has a next-to-nothing role. Gauri’s music, scored by Raju Singh, is at best average.

With a flood of films doing well, Gauri’s chances of making it big at the box office appear slim. But even if you are going Aaja Nachle with Madhuri Dixit, Gauri with local lady Rituparna may well be your second choice this week.