1920

The plot revolves around the events surrounding a married couple living in a haunted house in the year 1920. The film stars debutant actors Rajneesh Duggal and Adah Sharma as the married couple, along with Indraneil Sengupta in a special role. Loosely inspired by the 1973 horror film The Exorcist, it is the first installment of the 1920 film series, which was a commercial success. The film was also dubbed into Telugu and Tamil, under the title 1920 Gayathri. A sequel, 1920: The Evil Returns, was released in 2012 to mixed reviews and commercial success.

His family ambush his car en route to Bombay, assaulting him badly and setting the car on fire in an attempt to kill Lisa. Due to this, Arjun, once a deeply religious and devout Hindu, shuns his beliefs and abandons his family for his wife.

Meanwhile, in Palampur, a rich businessman has acquired a stately old manor home and plans to turn it into a boutique hotel. However, his estate manager MK, has difficulty in retaining an architect for the place as the two prior men both died under mysterious circumstances. Arjun wins the contract, so he and Lisa move into the manor as he begins his survey of the property.

Lisa begins experiencing strange noises and feels afraid, upon questioning Balwant, the caretaker, to confirm her suspicions, he rebuffs her and hints that she may have imagined it. Arjun attributes her experiences to anxiety from their recent escape and the fact that the countryside is quieter than the city. When he visits MK, he points out there is a sealed room at the back of the manor he will need access to as he needs to survey every part of the house. The manager readily agrees and tells him he has full authority to do as he wishes within the house as the owner was wanting to start the business as soon as possible. Lisa in the meantime, explores the house and finds the sealed room but the door is now open – inside she discovers a library with a beautiful piano and a portrait of a beautiful woman in Indian royal dress. She plays the piano however is disturbed by the feeling of someone watching – later that evening she and Arjun argue when she finds the room is sealed again and he refuses to believe her description of the room.

Balwant feels it is dangerous to allow people into the manor due to prior deaths, he accuses MK of being aware of the manor’s dark secrets as he refuses to visit the house due to his own fears, but MK threatens to fire him and gives him money to buy his silence.

Lisa, in an attempt to gain solace, visits the village church where she befriends Father Thomas. Confiding her worries and fears to him, Father Thomas reassures her that he will come by the house to bless it. Meanwhile, Arjun has workers remove the doors of the library and is amazed that Lisa’s description of the room was correct. Later that night, Lisa is tormented by an unknown spirit into the library where she sees the portrait has a name on the bottom – ‘Gayatri’. The next day, Arjun leaves to survey the vast property for a few hours and Lisa has Father Thomas bless the house, during which he discovers the manor is cursed and has held onto its dark past – later that night, Father Thomas is tormented by a spirit whispering in Latin. He rushes to the church archives where his colleague discovers the phrase means the house and its spirit are warning the church away.

The next day, he rushes to the manor to warn the occupants but discovers Arjun has taken Lisa to Delhi for a few weeks for a high-profile meeting with the project suppliers. Father Thomas begs Balwant to pass on a message to Lisa and Arjun that it is dangerous for them to stay in the house, and he promises to do so. On the road to Delhi, Arjun’s carriage is stopped by soldiers who inform them the roads are dangerous due to Indian rebel fighting with britishers further down the roads. As Arjun cannot afford to waste time, he leaves Lisa at home and proceeds on with his trip with armed guards. Balwant refuses to pass on Father Thomas’ message when Lisa comes home, and she falls badly sick after a night of terrors. The church windows begin to bleed and Father Thomas fears Lisa is at great risk.

When Arjun comes home to a gravely ill wife, he enlists a doctor’s help who urges him to get her admitted to the hospital. Father Thomas tries to tell Arjun that Lisa is possessed but he is not believed – at the hospital Lisa’s condition worsens as the spirit finally manifests itself. When the doctor and his staff attempt to sedate her, the spirit informs everyone of how the doctor raped his superior’s young daughter by sedating her in that very room. Shaken by his secret being let out, the doctor agrees to let Arjun try religious methods to save Lisa. Arjun visits MK and forces him to tell him the truth – but as the owner had only purchased the property two years prior, MK can only give the name of the prior caretaker – Radha, who left to live in Naya Nagar when the property ownership changed.

Arjun leaves Lisa in the care of church members and goes to Naya Nagar where he tracks Radha, now old, down. Radha reveals that the house was once owned by Rai Bahadur, a wealthy Indian of royal descent. In 1857 revolt when Radha was a child, he was away fighting the British, leaving his daughter Gayatri and her maid servants Kesar Ma and Radha to run the estate with two old male servants. One night, the manor occupants are disturbed by screams and find a man in the Indian Army uniform, staggering around the property badly wounded. He states his name is Mohan Kant and that he barely escaped the slaughter of his unit – one of the groups Gayatri’s father was leading, where over 90 men died to the British. The family sympathise and dedicate their time to getting him better, believing he is a patriot. During this time, Mohan becomes infatuated with Gayatri’s beauty and she grows close to him.

A few days later, Kesar Ma catches him secretly liaising with a British soldier during the night and confronts him. He kills and dumps her body in the well and lies to Gayatri, stating she has gone home to her village where a relative was badly ill. Gayatri becomes suspicious but is interrupted by Radha’s terrified state. Following her to the well, they discover Kesar Ma’s body. Gayatri then searches Mohan Kant’s belongings, discovering to her horror that he was a British spy who was responsible for the death of the unit as he leaked information to his commanding officer, betraying the Indian patriots and that he was waiting to go undercover for his protection.

Gayatri sends Radha with the messages to her father’s outpost in order to get help, she chooses to stay behind to seduce Mohan to delay his departure. She consummates the farce in the library long enough for her father to arrive with his troops and hang Mohan in the same room. He vows to haunt the manor awaiting her soul so he can take it with him to hell. Rai Bahadur refuses to acknowledge his daughter’s sacrifice, sealing the room and disowning her for bringing shame to the family for sleeping with a traitor – banishing her to her grandmother’s where she dies unwed and alone on 18th November 1896. Arjun surmises that this was the same night that Lisa was born, deducing that Gayatri and his wife share the same soul hence Mohan’s current obsession in possessing her, the spirit was attempting to kill Lisa in order to fulfil his vow. He ruminates on Lisa’s experiences in the house with regret, stating that his wife tried telling him many times that something was wrong with the house, but he had rebuffed her fears as baseless and silly, then rushes home.

Father Thomas tells Arjun he now has less than 24 hours to oust the spirit as the next day was the night of the new moon at which time the spirit would have full control of Lisa’s soul thus killing her. He suggests an exorcism. The church refuses to authorize the procedure without the bishop’s permission but this would be no later than two weeks by which time it would be too late. Father Thomas defies his superior’s orders and proceeds with the ritual. During the exorcism, Balwant and Father Thomas die due to the strength of the spirit, Arjun takes up the process but is forced to re-evaluate his atheist stance in renouncing his faith. Finally he is able to succeed by using the Hanuman Chalisa. The spirit of Mohan is destroyed and Lisa is free.

Afterward, Arjun completes the project and he acknowledges his faith stating that Gayatri’s soul was reborn looking for the love she was denied and now she and the manor were at peace.