Pavan Kripalani’s Gaslight, starring Sara Ali Khan, Vikrant Massey and Chitrangda Singh, raises a lot of questions. No, not that kind. There are no deep societal ruminations or darkness of motives or troubled backstories. These are questions of basic logic and these basic questions are so baffling that it becomes difficult to take the rest of the film seriously.

For instance, Gaslight is shot primarily in a large palace with cavernous rooms, spooky corridors, dark corners and numerous flights of stairs without a single ramp. How then does the protagonist, Meesha (Sara Ali Khan), the wheelchair-bound daughter of the Raja of Mayagarh, seem to get around? And get around she does, from second-floor rooms to ground-floor garages, from grand entrances on the first floor to the gardens and no one seems to wonder how. No one in the film that is.

All the spooks and jumpscares happen at night, as is wont, and the darkened corridors and shadowy rooms lend to the atmospherics. But why does a wheelchair-bound woman insist on traversing this maze at night without turning on a single light? Is the film called Gaslight because the palace is gaslit and no one turns them on at night? Also, how does a palace of this size, which requires an estate manager, have only one maid and a driver? Where is the rest of the staff? Or have they also gone AWOL like the raja of the palace?

Then there is a scene where a car is followed by another on an absolutely deserted street, parked right in the open near the secret rendezvous place, and no one seems to notice. And, well, people do get murdered (the only good murder in the film).

Gaslight has a promising premise. A wheelchair-bound princess with mental health issues comes back to her father’s palace after years and is greeted by an insincere stepmother, Rukmini (Chitrangda Singh), an absent father whose phone is switched off, a maid with suspicious behaviour and the overly sincere estate manager Kapil (Vikrant Massey). The people in and around the palace seem to be hiding as many secrets as there are shadowy corners in the humongous palace. Meesha starts seeing things that may or may not be true and casts aspersions on her perception of reality, hence the title ‘gaslight’ (no, I don’t think it has anything to do with the want of at least a gaslight to light the corridors of the palace). She starts believing — we are never told why, given that she has been estranged from her father for years — that her father has been murdered.

So far so good, but the writing and the execution leave much room for improvement as any person who is paying attention (and it is hard to keep your attention from wandering to other things while watching the film) can guess where this is headed. The jump scares become sillier and the gaslighting techniques more and more unbelievable, leaving you with a quickly fizzling out film, except for one last twist.

Even acting-wise, the film leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the actors, including Vikrant, hams it up from time to time, making it even more difficult to take the film seriously. But Sara is well-suited for this film that requires her to look dazed and depressed.

It might have been easier to gaslight Meesha than a child but it definitely does very little to hoodwink the audience.