Ishita Sengupta

Everything about Vishal Furia’s Maa is about the optics. The film is touted as mytho-horror, a shorthand of mythological horror, which has existed before. Aditya Sarpotdar’s Munjya (2024) is an example, yet Maa spells it out like the film is a product undergoing rebranding by a new CEO. Again, given the title, the end credits feature names of the makers and producers with their mothers’ names pencilled in the middle. Even for a persuasive film, this is too much posturing, and Maa is far from it. Hindi cinema has reached a point where the success of a genre should frighten us. The moment something works, ten similar projects are lined up, and this does not consider the sequels of the patient zero. Furia’s Maa is an upshot of this; it belongs in the same world as Shaitaan (2024) and exists because of the latter’s success.

The current landscape of the Hindi language streaming space is so dire that for every bad show, there is something worse waiting in the wings. This not just complicates comparisons but makes objective criticism impossible. For every “this is really the worst show” thought in your head, there is another informed thought that counters with “but don’t you remember that?” Mistry, the new JioHotstar show, is a little of this and that. Which is to say, it is an objectively bad series, but a worse series than it exists. Directed by Rishab Seth, Mistry is the remake of the popular American drama Monk. And while Seth reimagines it in an Indian setting, he also waters down everything fun in the procedural drama, making a damp squib of a series. The premise is the same: a detective with obsessive-compulsive disorder, grappling with the sudden death of his wife, helps the police force to solve cases. Much of the allure of Monk resided in its character development and in using humour not as a means to make light of mental illness, but as a vessel to make it accessible. Mistry goes for cheap thrills.

It is not an unreasonable want. Sitaare is the spiritual sequel of Taare Zameen Par (2007), Khan’s directorial debut that can function as a synonym of a sob-fest. Two decades ago, he played a perceptive teacher who recognised a dyslexic child’s struggle even when his parents failed to do so. This time, he plays an impolite basketball coach entrusted with the task of teaching the sport to a group of specially-abled people. Although adapted from the 2018 Spanish film Champions, there is a neatness to the circle, an authenticity to the premise of a teacher wanting to be taught. But there is a sea of difference between the performances, even when the intent remains the same. If Khan was pathbreaking in calling out the insensitivity in others, he is cloying when portraying the same thoughtlessness. His portrayal of an insecure athlete thrown into the mix of people he is prone to make fun of is superfluous at best, even when sincere. His pitch is perpetually dialled up, reminiscent of the sole misfire in Laal Singh Chaddha (2002), and at odds with the unaffected renditions of the rest. The film mimics the tonality.

The idea of a second chance is often linked to redemption, an opportunity to right a wrong. In Subhadra Mahajan’s stunningly shot, monochrome feature, Second Chance, the prospect gathers a restorative quality. The filmmaker slows down the immediacy, making second chances more about unlearning than learning. The difference is slight but lends ingenuity to a familiar premise. Nia (Dheera Johnson) is an affluent young woman who has retreated to the hills. Not much information is laid out, but not much is required. The film opens with a black screen, punctuated with her voice – shaky, disillusioned and desperate. She is trying to reach out to someone called Kabir over the phone to inform him that she has taken the pills. The next moment, Nia stands facing the snow-clad mountains. The juxtaposition of her frail being with the towering silhouette informs the narrative context, conveying her existential confinement. Still, the possibility of the ice thawing underlines the spiritual subtext of the film. Mahajan’s feature is as much about finding light at the end of the tunnel as it is about scouring light in the tunnel.

There is something innately awkward about enjoying Akshay Kumar doing comedy. The feeling is similar to reading old scrapbooks and being amused at an earlier version of oneself. Or, meeting someone from the past with thorny opinions and enjoying their company briefly. To enjoy Akshay Kumar doing comedy is to reckon with his problematic brand of humour and appreciate his genius of making even the most worn-out jokes fun. If there is a conundrum here, it is only exemplified in his latest, Housefull 5, a film version of the actor’s absurd hilarity. Nothing about Housefull 5 looked good. The film has 19 actors, an ensemble so off-kilter that it can convince anyone about the dearth of employment in Bollywood. Written by Farhad Samji and Tarun Mansukhani, the thriller comedy has two endings (5A and 5B) in an economy when makers are struggling to end one film well. And, more crucially, it is an extension of a franchise that has a history of mining humor at the expense of every living being except men.

A lot about Karan Tejpal’s Stolen is vague. The landscape looks familiar, but no names are given, and an angry mob keeps gathering steam, but their rooted investment is unclear. A woman claims to be pregnant without a man involved, and a deserted mansion is deemed cursed without a direct reason. Such obscurity feels deliberate. Stolen is as specific as encompassing, as much a story as a statement. The survival thriller is about people and society. There is little novelty about the overlap, but Tejpal’s film, breathless in its pace, straddles the many worlds of its creation with distinct urgency. It manages to hold our gaze close to certain faces while churning the fear of the unknown. The result is a rare film about class that unfolds with its ear close to the ground. One that resists making empty statements by checking its privilege as part of the critique. In that sense, Stolen is eerily reminiscent of Navdeep Singh’s NH10 (2015), a slasher thriller that contained multitudes of horror in its proposition: what happens when the urban enters the lawless rural jungle? What happens when a part of India collides with another? Written by Swapnil Salkar, Gaurav Dhingra and Tejpal, Stolen asks the same questions and keeps addressing them during its runtime.

Karan Kandhari’s Sister Midnight is a radical beast. It is provocative and outlandish, hilarious and macabre. It is intimately accessible and formidably alienating; it is a dark comedy where the depth of darkness constantly squirms with the possibility of humour. Kandhari’s directorial feature is as much a clutter-breaker as it is a freewheeling venture, making up its mind on the go about what to do with itself after having broken the clutter. Surreal and odd, Sister Midnight is a frighteningly original shape-shifting film that cautiously evades meaning to avoid making sense. One would be tempted to brand it as subversive, but Kandhari’s debut is more defiant in its energy, restive in spirit and endearing at its core. The filmmaker suffuses each frame with sprinting chaos where the refusal to conform takes over everything else, outlining in the process a distinct feminine existence in its absence of coherence.

In Chandan Arora’s Kankhajura, an actor is pitted against the show. This isn’t the story, but the effect. Roshan Mathew plays the protagonist and delivers a performance that is at once suited to the presumed complexity of the series and at odds with the inert ambition of it. The bravura turn uplifts Arora’s work, prompting a reading of what it could have been had it strived harder, and underlines its failure to match up to the merit of its protagonist. Arora is Ashu, a timid young man who stutters when anxious. And, he is anxious all the time. His eyes are perpetually lowered, and his back is slouched like he is pinned against the wall. His defeatist body language suggests decades of bullying, and yet, he was imprisoned for killing someone. The only person who gets him going is his brother, Max (Mohit Raina), a flamboyant builder dissimilar to his sibling in every way. Max is ambitious and reassured, forceful and scheming.