Naina is a Hindi horror film

Horror film

Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...

 released in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 in 2005

2005 in film

- Highest-grossing films :Please note that following the tradition of the English-language film industry, these are the top-grossing films that were first released in the United States in 2005...

. It stars Urmila Matondkar

Urmila Matondkar

Urmila Matondkar is an Indian film actress.Matondkar, who made her screen debut as a child artist in the 1980 film Kalyug, debuted as an adult in Narasimha...

. It is an uncredited remake of the Hong Kong

Cinema of Hong Kong

The cinema of Hong Kong is one of the three major threads in the history of Chinese language cinema, alongside the cinema of China, and the cinema of Taiwan...

 film The Eye

The Eye (2002 film)

The Eye, also known as Seeing Ghosts, is a 2002 horror film directed by the Pang brothers. The film spawned two sequels by the Pang brothers, The Eye 2 and The Eye 10...

, meaning the original writers received no compensation as opposed to that provided by the American remake The Eye

The Eye (2008 film)

The Eye is a 2008 supernatural horror film starring Jessica Alba. It is a remake of the Pang Brothers' 2002 film of the same name.-Plot:Sydney Wells is a successful classical violinist who has been blind since the age of five. Fifteen years later, Sydney undergoes a cornea transplant, which causes...

.

Its release caused controversy in India because its depiction of the protagonist seeing ghosts after receiving a corneal transplant was similar to existing fears in India surrounding corneal transplants and it was feared the film would discourage people from donating

Organ donation

Organ donation is the donation of biological tissue or an organ of the human body, from a living or dead person to a living recipient in need of a transplantation. Transplantable organs and tissues are removed in a surgical procedure following a determination, based on the donor's medical and...

 corneas or seeking corneal transplants.

Film is not to be confused with the Jayaram

Jayaram

Jayaram is an Indian film actor who mainly acts in Malayalam and Tamil films. He is also a chenda percussionist and mimic artist. In 2011, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India for his contribution towards the arts.-Early life:...

 starrer Naina (2002 film) or Naina (1973 film) starring Shashi Kapoor

Shashi Kapoor

Shashi Kapoor , born Balbir-Raj Prithviraj Kapoor on 18 March 1938 in Calcutta , is an award-winning Indian film actor and film producer. He has also been film director and assistant director in Hindi Films. He is a member of the Kapoor family, a film dynasty in India's Bollywood cinema...

, as the three films are completely unrelated.

Plot

During the 1986 Surya Grahan, young Naina Shah, while traveling in the backseat of her England-based dad's car, is struck by glass from the shattered windshield during an accident, and loses her eyesight. Her parents do not survive, and she is brought up by her paternal grandmother. Years later, Naina gets a successful cornea transplant, and is able to see. She complains of vision problems, seeing hooded persons, and people dying, which a psychiatrist, Samir Patel, diagnoses as hallucinations. But when Naina reports seeing someone else in her mirror reflection, Sameer decides to investigate who the original cornea actually belonged to. This investigation will lead them to an impoverished village in New Bhuj, Gujarat, where she will find her life endangered by hostile villagers who believe that the donor of her cornea was cursed.

Cast

• Urmila Matondkar ... Naina Shah
• Anuj Sawhney ... Dr. Samir Patel
• Shweta Konnur ... Khemi
• Amardeep Jha ... Somabai
• Kamini Khanna ... Mrs. Shah
• Sulabha Arya ... Parvati Amma
• Morne Botes ... Burn Victim
• Dinesh Lamba ... Rathore
• Rahul Nath ... Ghost
• Anthony Rosato ... Police Officer
• Tom Saville ... Misc

Reception

Naina mostly got mixed reviews from the critcs. Taran Adarsh from Bollywood Hungama said, 'NAINA is one of the most imaginative and pulse-pounding horror films to come along in recent times. It leaves the viewer frightened, terrified and petrified. As a horror movie, it packs one genuine scare after another, right till its finale'. The film got a 90% opening in the First week but its collections dropped heavily. At last it was given an 'average' tag.

Urmila Matondkar was especially praised for her performance.