The film was Armaan Kohli's comeback film where he was reintroduced with a new name Munish Kohli.[3] Before release, the film created huge hype due to the use of various special effects, uncommon for the industry at the time, and this film marked Akshay Kumar and Sunny Deol's first film together who were two of the biggest action heroes of the last decade.[4] However, the two did not have any scenes together.
Upon release, the film received overwhelming negative reviews and was a flop at the box office. It is also considered one of the worst films ever made. Moreover, over the years, the film has achieved cult status in the worst film genre.[5]
Divya (Manisha Koirala) and Karan Saxena (Sunny Deol) are in love and engaged. Karan has a younger step-brother, Vivek (Sonu Nigam), whom he looks after as if he was his brother. Divya and Vivek study in the same college as their best-friends group. The group includes:
Atul Agarwal (Akshay Kumar), who is dating Nita (Rambha) and is an atheist and the leader of their group.
Bodybuilder and boxer Vijay (Sunil Shetty), who is dating Preeti (Pinky Campbell).
Vivek Saxena (Sonu Nigam), Atul's best friend and Karan's brother.
Abdul (Arshad Warsi), who is always looking to crack a joke.
Rajesh (Rajat Bedi), a mimicry artist and a womanizer who always lusts for Divya.
Divya/Vasundhara (Manisha Koirala), the most beautiful girl in the college.
Two students named Rajesh and Madan (Sushant 'Siddharth' Ray) attempt to rape Divya. They are stopped and beaten up by Karan, who takes them to the college's principal, Professor Joseph. He agrees to let the incident go if Divya forgives them, which she later does. However, Rajesh and Madan decide to avenge their humiliation. Soon after, Karan goes to London for work. Divya then begins to have premonitions of a past life and later learns that her name was Vasundhara in a past life, and she was in love with Kapil (Armaan Kohli), a snake with magical powers. Their love life was shattered when they disturbed an angry sage (Amrish Puri) who cursed them with separation until the 21st century. Kapil had to undergo penance until the 21st century when Vasundhara will be reborn as Divya. He also gained supernatural strength, near-immortality, and the power to impersonate anything as a result of his penance. The sage warned him that he could be defeated or killed by someone with a supernatural and immortal being considered to be an equal opponent to Kapil.
Under the pretext of inviting Divya to Atul's party, Rajesh imitates the voices of all the guys in the group and tricks her into coming to an abandoned fort earlier than the scheduled time for the party. Divya arrives, where she is brutally raped by Rajesh and Madan, prompting her to kill herself. Divya's friends arrive, and she curses them, thinking that they were involved in the rape. Kapil learns of her death and promises to get his revenge on everyone in the group. As a result, Madan is killed the same night by Kapil. Divya is meanwhile reduced to a soul, who could enter human bodies and control them as per her wish. Rajesh gets married and his best friends arrive at the party. On that night, she enters the soul of his bride and kills him.
Kapil and Divya decide to kill everyone (everyone whose voice Rajesh had imitated) who coerced her to go to the fort. Kapil impersonates a driver who gives a lift to Victor when his car broke down. After isolating him, Kapil runs over Victor with a motorbike. He goes to the party in Lonavala impersonating Victor and kills Abdul by electrocuting him.
Atul and his friends, with the help of their Principal Joseph (Raj Babbar), a professor of parapsychology, summon Divya's ghost. They try to reason with Divya, explaining that they had never called her to the fort after she initially declined. However, she refuses to believe their innocence. The principal gives the group necklaces with higher powers and assures them that they cannot be harmed by supernatural forces when they are wearing the necklace. Atul, an atheist, doesn't believe this. However, when he is attacked by Kapil, he realizes he survived because the necklace was stuck in his hand. Later, Kapil impersonates Nita and badly injures Atul but couldn't kill him. He ends up in a coma.
Divya then enters Prem's body and kills his nemesis, Ashok. Prem is immediately arrested but could be set free based on Rashmi's false statement, which she is willing to give because she was also in love with Prem. However, Divya enters Rashmi's body and accuses Prem of the murder in court. A distraught Prem is sentenced to be hanged to death by the court.
Preeti's father wants her to marry his friend's boxer son Raju instead of Vijay. Her father and Raju collude and decide that Raju will kill Vijay in a boxing match to remove him from the picture. Divya enters Raju's body and almost knocks out Vijay. But the principal notices this and uses his paraphernalia to block Divya's presence. Divya doesn't let Kapil interfere, and Vijay knocks out Raju. Divya stopped Kapil as she wants to be the one killing Vijay since he was the one who informed her of the time to arrive at the fort that night. She exacts her revenge by entering Vijay's body, which leads him to jump off the terrace and die.
The death of all his friends scares Vivek, who calls Karan to return to Mumbai to protect him. Before Karan could arrive home, Kapil impersonates their college principal and tells him to throw off the locket, he then tries to kill him but scares him off. Kapil then impersonates Karan and stabs Vivek, but couldn't kill him after noticing Karan's arrival. Kapil escapes and a confused Karan is arrested after Vivek accuses him of the stabbing. Atul comes out of a coma and escapes the hospital with Vivek, who also recovered at the same hospital to kill Kapil. Atul is stabbed by Kapil while trying to save Vivek. Kapil then goes after Vivek. Atul, unable to destroy Kapil or save Vivek's life, goes to the principal and begs him to save Vivek's life. Atul then dies due to blood loss from his injuries.
Karan breaks out of the police lockup and shows up to stop Kapil from killing Vivek. Karan is fatally wounded by Kapil. Principal Joseph resurrects Karan with outer-world powers by merging all 4 religions of the world, granting him supernatural powers like Kapil. Karan finally kills Kapil. Vivek and Karan survive with Vivek being the only survivor among his best friends. Kapil and Vasundhara reunite in heaven.
Cast
Sunny Deol as Karan Saxena, Vivek's elder brother.
A star-studded cast was initially planned for this film featuring Sunny Deol, Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Ajay Devgn, Sanjay Dutt, Jackie Shroff, Chandrachur Singh, Apurva Agnihotri, Aftab Shivdasani, Arshad Warsi, Shilpa Shetty and Armaan Kohli but then the cast subsequently changed and it later starred Sunny Deol, Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, Chandrachur Singh, Aftab Shivdasani, Arshad Warsi, Atul Agnihotri, Shilpa Shetty and Armaan Kohli. The film's theme was initially similar to that of Kohli's previous venture Nagin (1976) at that time, and the heroes were playing young mature men instead of college students later cast subsequently changed to Sunny Deol, Akshay Kumar, Sonu Nigam, Suniel Shetty, Aftab Shivdasani, Aditya Pancholi, Arshad Warsi, Sharad Kapoor, Manisha Koirala and Armaan Kohli in the lead role with a different subject.
Reception
Critical response
This film received highly negative reviews from critics. Ranjita Kulkarni of Rediff.com rated the film 1.5/10 saying, "The performances are half-hearted and the characters half-baked". He also called the film "unoriginal and disappointing". Akshay Kumar was the only one with a watchable performance and the star of the film, Sunil Shetty was barely average & Sunny Deol was wasted in this movie because he did fewer scenes than in his previous movies.[6]
Bollywood Hungama rated the film 1.5/5, stating, "The film has a huge cast, but only Sunny Deol and Akshay Kumar leave an impact. Munish "Armaan" Kohli & others don't impress much".The film's VFX is even considered one of the worst VFX even today. Planet Bollywood rated the film 5/10, saying "In terms of a story, writers Aatish and Kohli have just churned out a mish-mash of the previous two hits. The reason why Manisha blames all her friends for her death seems lame, hence the film fails to hold together or have any sort of lasting impact. Also, the story of "Ichadari Naag" etc is a bit hard to digest in this day and age. The screenplay of the movie is pathetic. A lot of the scenes in the movie evoke laughter where they shouldn't. Just take for example how Akshay Kumar and Sonu Nigam don´t die and keep coming back for more. After the worst form of stabbings and bashings, they seem to look almost healthy in the next scene. Dialogues by K.K Singh are disappointing."
Box Office
Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahaani opened well at the box office, collecting about ₹13.5 million on its first day. It collected ₹14 million on its second day and ₹12.7 million on its third day, taking its opening weekend collection to ₹40.2 million.
However, the negative critical reception led to a drastic fall in the box office collection. Its first-week collection closed at ₹64.7 million. Its collection continued declining, and finally ended up at a domestic net of ₹107.1 million, resulting in the film being declared a "Flop" by Box Office India.
