There’s a very smart moment in the middle of this horror film when the hero falls unconscious and wakes up in the past. He meets the love of his life for the first time, tells her that they will one day get married, and that she will die.
She doesn’t buy it but tells him it’s at least an original horror story.
Unfortunately, this original story of waking up in the past is NOT the film. It just remains a cheeky idea for a scene before the film returns to genre clichés and its predictable end.
Which is a little tragic because there are a lot of moments that work, and quite effectively, for scares in this film that is happy to recycle familiar sights and sounds. However, to its credit, 3 a.m. unwinds at a fairly brisk pace and employs considerable restraint, if not logic, to win our empathy for its characters.
Rannvijay Singh has improved tremendously as an actor since Mod and he lends the character his no-nonsense attitude to compensate for very poor judgment. Anindita Nayar is the film’s sunshine (no prizes for guessing what happens to sunshine in a horror film called 3 a.m. ) while Salil Acharya and Kavin Dave are not too bad playing the guys the selfish hero lures into his pet project that’s destined for doom.
While most horror films spend a long time in the build-up before slowly bumping off characters one by one (from a large group of characters), 3 a.m. at least gets into horror mode fairly early and keeps us engaged with just three characters in the dark — sort of like The Blairwitch Project to Study Paranormal Activity.
If you want to take someone who is easily scared, 3 a.m. might be the ideal date film. Just don’t expect too much, you will survive.