A medical college hostel, somewhere in North India; the haughty seniors ragging the shy freshers; a lone junior, who decides to stand up against the excesses; the other juniors then joining him to protest against the ragging practices.  The film 404 could just have been a true-to-life depiction of medical college hostel happenings. But then it also starts treading the thin line between a psychological and supernatural thriller, when the bright and brave junior decides to stay alone in the hostel’s room no.404. The room is rumoured to be haunted and has been lying locked, after a student committed a suicide there three years earlier.

The daring junior’s eyebrow-raising act of moving into the ‘haunted’ room turns into something even more sinister when the seniors ruthlessly rag him to psyche him about the dead student. Suddenly this rational, intelligent youngster starts having regular visions of the suicide victim; he even starts to ‘converse’ with the ‘spirit’. The college’s psychology professor tries to reassure the young student that what he is seeing are just hallucinations borne out of the ragging episode. But is there more than what meets the eye?

After establishing an authentic medical college hostel scenario, 404 builds up the eerie atmosphere superbly. There is a constant underlying tension and a sense of unfathomable mystery, which keeps you guessing till the right end. And the end then just leaves you shocked!

Writer-director Prawaal Raman has come up with an eminently watchable psychological horror thriller. The camera-work and the visuals are top-notch considering the small budget this film operates on. Almost every actor in the small cast leaves the mark but the honors are shared by Rajwir Arora and Imad Shah, who play the upright junior and the ragging senior respectively.