Cracking Up in the Guest House

Stolen from Haveeru Online

There were no two ways about it: I had to go see Amjay's new movie “The Guest House: Room 201”. For one thing, it was written and directed by Amjay. He’s like the Uwe Boll of Maldives, notorious for making really, really bad movies even by Maldives’ standards, which is about as low as anything could possibly get without getting buried. For another, judging from the ads for the movie, it looked like it was going to be a horror movie and as most of us have learned there are only a few things in the world funnier than a Dhivehi horror movie. Besides, a leaflet for the movie, filled with typos and other fun mistakes, promised audiences such novel things as ‘Horror’, ‘Suspense’, ‘Alive’, ‘Smiling’ and, for some strange reason, even ‘Supplicate’. You can’t go wrong with a movie that promises to supplicate you, whatever that means. I was pretty impressed with the ‘Smiling’ too; this was definitely something I needed to watch.

Since the leaflet also promised there would only be “Limited Seats”, I rushed over to get my ticket. To my surprise, taking up nearly half the area behind the ticket counter was no other than Director Amjay himself. I could be wrong but it is possible that only in Maldives would you find the Director of the movie selling the tickets to his own movie. He told me that the movie would be “very fun” and I responded with “Smiling!” giving the word the same inflection as I would have if I had said ‘Brilliant!’ There was also another guy sitting in the limited space behind the counter not immediately occupied by Amjay. After doing a rather dramatic double-take I recognized the guy as one of the lead actors from the posters for the movie. I didn’t know at that time that I would later make a very disturbing connection about why the star of the movie had been lurking in the background behind Amjay. To be fair, where Amjay was concerned, everything else around him automatically became background, so there really was no help for it in this instance.

To be honest, I was pretty impressed with the turnout for the movie. Nearly 1/3 of the seats were filled and this was the last of the “Only 3 Show” [sic] advertised in the leaflet. Not surprisingly, the movie was late by around 15 minutes. Just when I thought I couldn’t tolerate the looping ads -- the tagline for one: ‘La Femme, for the women in you’, nearly killed me before the movie had even started – the movie began.

Never one to leave the entertaining stuff for later, Amjay starts his movie by throwing the audience headfirst into a song and dance sequence. After that, the first thing you notice about the movie is that everyone is fat! And I don’t mean ‘the camera adds 10 pounds’ fat either. I don’t know the technicalities behind this but it seemed to me the movie had been shot for normal TV screens’ aspect ratio and then stretched to fit a widescreen format. The result was that everyone was stretched horizontally and looked really wide and fat if they were standing up and really thin and long if they were lying down. Watching them onscreen reminded me of a picture joke I once saw online. In the joke there was a picture of a fat cat looking up at the heavens with his paws together as if praying and under it was written: “Please God, if you can’t make me thin, make my friends fat!” I couldn’t help but think that Amjay was getting his revenge with his new movie.

After the song – the point of which I failed to grasp completely but which did give me a splitting headache from all the shrill screaming – so it did its work I guess – the movie began. Unlike other horror movies where the villain/evil force/physical manifestation of evil is usually unseen or hidden until a bit later in the movie, Amjay sees no use in keeping his audience in suspense and shows the guy in fake bloody makeup at the very beginning, usually lurking behind someone or the hotel’s counter. What is really comical about these scenes is that the audience can see the ‘bloody ghost’ – and I mean that literally – looking lost and out of place while lurking behind Shavin, who plays the part of a devoted husband, while he is talking to Hajja. But neither of them takes any notice of the bloody figure in the room with them. It was after seeing the ‘ghost’ hiding behind someone or a counter for a few times that I made the connection. I had seen him lurking behind Amjay and the ticket counter when I had gone there to buy the tickets! Shortly after I made the connection, a woman in the audience behind me said to the person next to her: “Hey, that guy was sitting behind the counter near Amjay when I went to buy the tickets. Do you think it’s a movie gimmick? Or is this lurking behind counters something he does out of habit?”

The sound in the theatre was, to put it mildly, deafening. My ears were ringing throughout and even a loving whisper on screen reverberated through the ground and felt like a minor earthquake. At least the roar of the movie drowned the screaming and jeering from the audience who, to their credit, did not let that fact stop them in the least. The screams and heckling were especially loud whenever Ameela (who everyone might remember from the shower scenes in the silly ‘Kiss the Jazbaath’ VCD movie) runs around or engages in activity that allows two of her physical attributes to roam around all over the screen in all their bouncy glory, seemingly independent of their governing body. And these gravity defying scenes occur a lot, by the way.

Amjay seems to possess an unusual knack for eking out really hammy performances from even average actors and this movie was no different. The bad acting was helped along by even worse dialogues though, so it was the double combination that really contributed to the knockout power. Much to the movie’s credit, the story never ever even pretends to make sense. The plot is basically this: a guy walks in to find his wife cheating on him and so he kills them both in a violent fit of anger. The double murder is committed in room 201 of a guest house. Years later he goes to a new guest house with his new wife and the ghost of the guy who he killed begins to haunt his new wife. This happens in room 201 of the new guest house too. That’s about it really.

Amjay also throws in one more song for no apparent reason other than one seemed to be required. The song they had decided to rape, pillage and plagiarize was the beautiful tune by the all-girl band, Bond, called Victory. The song will never be the same for me after this movie.

The most suspenseful part of the movie came right after Shaavin’s character goes into flashback mode and confesses to his new wife, Hajja, that he had earlier in the movie killed his ex-wife and her lover. With a knife. In the bedroom.

The confession comes right after the ‘ghost’ confronts Hajja in the bathroom and tells her that Shaavin had murdered him for “no reason”. I don’t think sleeping with someone else’s wife really fits the ‘innocent bystander’ story told earlier by the ghost but ghosts are known to be confused spirits so I guess that little fib can be forgiven. In one of the most incredible scenes in the movie, Hajja escapes from the ghost in the bathroom by wrestling with it and practically throwing it onto the sink. I was expecting an elbow drop followed by pile-driver but the filmmakers probably didn't have the imagination. The audience just lost it at that point and the howling and laughter nearly brought the rickety fans down. One can't help but wonder why she was scared of the ghost since she seemed totally capably of putting the smack down on his ass. After that, Shaavin and Hajja both decide to leave Room 201 and escape. Easier said than done, I thought. Just as they leave the room however, something happens. Shaavin stops. So does Hajja. The ghost appears behind them and time stands still. The screen freezes.

This is where the suspense kicked in and even the jeering and howling stopped as everyone held their breath, waiting to see what would happen next.

And then the movie ended.

Yeah, exactly.

When the screen went blank there was a confused silence throughout the theatre. After a minute or so someone said loudly: “Is that the end?” Then people began, still looking around at everybody else uncertainly, to leave. After waiting for five minutes, thinking that it must be intermission time despite no indication that it was so, I decided to leave too since the theatre was practically empty by then. People shuffled out and began leaving Olympus. In a strange nonsensical way I think it made absolute sense that the movie would end that way. I don’t know if the movie was finished or not but after around 45 minutes of watching "The Guest House: Room 201", I had had enough. I’ve had my Rf30 worth of laughs either way. Money well spent, I feel. Amjay had done it again. His reputation is still intact.