The Wife-- My take on the movie with spoilers!

 PLOT SUMMARY: Varun and his wife move into a new apartment only to find out it is haunted.

People move into a new house. One of them immediately makes contact with a spirit, usually a child. The parents think that their kid has created an imaginary friend. They are wrong. The malicious spirit wrecks havoc. A priest is called, and an exorcism is performed. The family return to their normal lives. Or do they?

The Wife follows the tired old trope of all haunted house movies except there is no kid but there is a spirit who is actually haunting the husband and not the house. The spirit, however, waits years until the husband moves into a new house before beginning to haunt him.

The movie doesn't offer an original story, the acting is stoic at best. There are times when the hero has an encounter with a ghost but literally shows no emotion. Is he scared? Is he bored? Does he regret signing on this movie considering he had better success on TV? Nobody can say for sure.

THE WIFE Movie Plot

The movie opens with a woman on the bed. Her face is not shown. Another woman approaches her with a pillow and smothers her.

Cut to a couple moving into a new house. It's a big, spacious apartment with paint colors the couple doesn't really approve of.

Their names are Varun and Arya. Both have just started their businesses and work mainly from home which is why they stress about the purchase of the apartment.

To throw the viewers off the track, we are informed that an old woman had died in the apartment.

The couple move a mattress into the room and immediately decide to get intimate when suddenly they hear knocking sounds coming from the wardrobe which also acts as a large mirror. Varun cautiously opens the doors to reveal a trapped crow.

The couple wonder how a bird got into their wardrobe.

Soon enough all the rooms are set and the couple begin to focus on their respective jobs.

They also keep a maid who brings along a baby because her sister is off visiting a village or something and deemed it necessary to leave her baby behind for her trip.

Arya is more than happy to have a baby in the house even if it isn't hers. She is sick of taking birth control pills and wants to start a family but Varun wants to wait until they are well-settled in their careers before doing so.

They did not want to wait to buy an apartment though. Apartment trumps baby.

Varun isn't too pleased to have a baby around but sucks it up for Arya's sake. Besides he doesn't have to stick around the house and it is difficult to find another housemaid at such short notice.

Arya plays with the baby but she too goes out for some reason or another. Her job description isn’t very clear.

Varun works as a film editor and Arya does something with designs and for some reason they are able to afford a large apartment in the heart of the city.

While the couple is out, the maid experiences the first haunting, which is the TV turning on by itself. The maid thinks its the baby who instead of napping wants to watch some TV instead.

She switches it off but the TV keeps coming on.

There are some visuals of the front loading washing machine that is a foreshadow of a terrible incident that is about to happen.

Soon enough, the next time the couple goes out, the maid is cleaning the house when she goes into the bathroom and sees something in the washing machine. She screams. We are shown the empty bed where the baby was supposed to be sleeping.

The maid is accused of drowning the baby and it makes front page news.

We then meet author Dr Raima Das who has penned a book on the paranormal. In every interview, she gives the same statement of a spirit staying back because they want something from the living.

Arya goes to meet her right after the interview. The first thing Raima says is that Arya has problems in her marriage. She is so intuitive that she doesn't care much for Arya's story about the cabinet doors opening all by themselves or her phone making thirteen calls to her husband who was in a very important meeting and didn't know how to put his phone on silent.

Nope, Raima is certain that Arya has a troubled marriage which Arya declines to admit. When the author is still not convinced, Arya pulls out the newspaper to show her the incident regarding the maid drowning the baby.

Raima immediately gets convinced Arya is experiencing a haunting because of that.

Raima goes to the couple's house and of course Varun makes a fuss about having strangers come to his home and inspect it.

While he's fussing, Raima takes one look around and immediately sees the legs of a ghost reflected in the mirror. She turns around and gasps.

THE WIFE Ending Explained with Spoilers!

Raima comes out to inform the couple that she is certain about their rocky relationship and most importantly, yes, they are being haunted.

Arya wants to move but Raima tells her that Varun is the one being haunted, not the new apartment.

She asks Varun if he knows anyone called Sarika. Varun plays dumb and says, nope.

The ghost has apparently introduced herself to Raima and so the professor is insistent that the couple may know Sarika and that is the reason they are being haunted.

When the professor leaves,  Varun finally picks up his brother's call, something he has been avoiding throughout the movie.

He is informed by someone else on the line that his brother had passed away two days ago.

Varun is shocked and decides he needs to come clean to his wife.

He is sleeping at night when Arya decides to climb atop him. Since Arya has never pulled a bold move like that before, he is suspicious but also looking for a good time and so gives in.

That's when the real Arya emerges from the bathroom. Varun gets shocked that he was getting frisky with a ghost.

The couple leave the house immediately and sit in a car. It is raining apparently but none of it gets on the windshield and it looks like someone is simply pouring water down their windows.

Varun reveals to Arya how he used to live in a small village and how his father didn't qualify for the best father or kind human award. In fact, he would trouble a lot of women and was looking for a chance to gain more power, and so took the aid of a witch.

In order to get into her good books, Varun's father got him married as a child to the witch's daughter Sarika.

Ah...so she's the WIFE....as in the title of the movie.

Sarika keeps following Varun around. He throws rocks at her because he wants to spend time with his friends, but she expertly dodges them, matrix-style.

Eventually, Varun's brother Vikram decides to interfere. One day when she is stalking Varun, Vikram chases her into the middle of a CGI field and does something untoward.

In the present, Varun tells her that his brother's mistake is what probably set off the haunting.

The couple take Raima's help who brings along her assistant Ganesh too.

The next scene is lifted from the movie Insidious, wherein Varun is told to enter the world of the dead.

So while he is bound to a chair and the chants are going on, Varun finds himself in the village where he sees Sarika's mother and shows the first frightened expression in the movie. Finally, he acts well in the climax.

However, Sarika takes possession of him and it is up to Raima to scream at the ghost who is making Varun do extreme yoga that she needs to leave the couple alone as it isn’t Varun's fault.

At one point the ghost decides to drop a mirror on Ganesh and Raima thinks it is better to say his name calmly rather than telling him to duck.

Ganesh has a good head on his shoulders and understands. He jumps out of the way but isn't too happy to be almost crushed. So he uses a lighter to burn Varun/Sarika's hand.

The ghost can take the screaming and the chants but can't deal with having the hand being burner slowly. She leaves in black smoke.

Some normalcy returns to the couple's home. Varun tells Arya he is ready to start a family. Arya finds Raima's earring under the fridge and decides to personally return it to her.

While she is gone, Varun finds his first wife on the bed. It is then revealed that he was the one who had mistreated Sarika after which her mother kept her alive until she was older before smothering her so that her spirit could haunt Varun at his new home.

The balcony railing that was never fixed plays a major role in what happens next.

Varun is shocked to see a ghost sitting on his bed and stumbles backwards...right towards the railing and then falls. We never see him hit the ground but there is no chance this movie is going to see a sequel, is there?

The movie suffers due to its clumsy writing and predictable plot. Thankfully there weren't any songs to break the pace.

Scare Scale: 2/5