Film: 'Agyaat'; Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Cast: Nitin Reddy, Priyanka Kothari, Gautam Rode, Rasika Duggal; Rating: ** 1/2

Jungle fever has never been more contagious. Every corner of the Sri Lankan jungle in 'Agyaat', as shot with mesmeric skill by cinematographer Surjodeep Ghosh, is filled with danger.

There lurks a diabolic unknown ('agyaat') monster in the treacherous greenery. Ram Gopal Varma has always been a master of manipulative terror. His camara range is constantly petrifying and persistently resonant. The sequences in 'Agyaat' are ceaselessly shot in a way that suggests the presence of lethal characters and entities whom we and the people on screen cannot see...only feel.

In this endeavour to evoke ghoulish visions of omnipresent danger, Varma is vastly aided by the sound design.

Sound designers Dwarak Warrier and Leslie Fernandes go easy on the eerie sounds and beguiling banshees. Instead there are chilling eruptions of noises that you probably hear in the wilderness but don't pay attention to as being anything remarkable. The sound also includes snatches from Hemant Kumar Mukherjee's immortal 'Kahin deep jale kahin dil' from the old 'Bees Saal Baad'.

But this is well into the new millennium. The perils of modern life such as cut-throat competitiveness often lead to the throat being literally cut.

Who knows who's killing the film unit in 'Agyaat'? Maybe it's their own fears and ambitions that are killing them. And the crew's calm cinematographer (Kali Prasad Mukherjee) finally commits suicide.