Lupt is the latest in a series of karmic horror films, with the kind of plot you can predict from the first frame but hang around for anyway just to see how the corpses pile up. Successful businessman Harsh Tandon (Jaaved Jaaferi) is bulldozed by his family into taking a vacation for which he does not have the time or the inclination. Harsh is committed to making money, but he has also been having strange visions recently, and decides to take a break to relax his brain.
Since the Tandons are the kind of family that never seems to have watched a horror film, they don’t react very strongly when familiar signs start littering their path – the sudden breakdown of their vehicle, a stroller with a strange-looking a doll, a mysterious man who turns up out of nowhere and invites them to his cottage in the middle of the woods, the creaking swings and flickering lights.
The body count is too low for genre fans, and writer and director Prabhuraj attempts to compensate by piling on the jump scares and cranking up the volume button. The family tensions, especially between Harsh and his prankster son Sam (Rishabh Chaddha), are better explored than the horrors that inevitably catch up with the Tandons. Vijay Raaz, cast in a role that demands nothing from him, occasionally pitches in with gnomic declarations on life and death. There is nothing here that is truly frightening, and not enough substance to justify the running time of 117 minutes, but at least the actors are committed to the material.