Maa

The problem with Hindi horror movies used to be that they’d sabotage their scares with music and romance. This was done mainly as a promotional tactic to lure (family) audiences to theatres, and to then give them an opportunity to use the washroom or get a popcorn refill during the interval. Neither the music nor the romance had any business being in those movies, but they were left intact anyway. They contributed nothing to the plot; in fact, they actually brought it to a standstill. The music and romance issue with Hindi horror has now been replaced with an even more irritating trend: social messaging. The latest film to fall prey to this bizarre, self-defeating strategy is Maa. It would, however, be a stretch to even describe it as a horror film, seeing how far it strays from the genre in its final act. This is when Kajol’s grieving single mother, Ambika, discovers that her teenage daughter has been kidnapped by a forest-dwelling demon, who intends on impregnating her to carry forward his ‘vansh’ or some nonsense. Ambika rushes into the lion’s den, so to speak, determined to rescue her daughter from the demon’s clutches. But before she leaves on her mission, she is told by the superstitious locals that she must perform a ritual, and seek the blessings of Goddess Kali. Kali is the only one who can vanquish the demon, she is told. And so, Ambika… does a song-and-dance number.

Mothers are a resilient lot. Harm their kids, then be ready for a battle. In Maa, Kajol’s maternal instincts face their toughest test as she contends with superstitions as well as a girl child-feasting, tree-residing monster who has eyes on her adolescent daughter. Kajol’s Ambika is an ordinary woman trapped in extraordinary circumstances, but then the film’s title isn’t just a nod to her but also to the powerful and dangerous deity who should not be messed with—Kali Maa. Mining India’s mythology and religious beliefs to craft a horror that’s contemporarily relevant is a nifty idea that’s been attempted before, but to do so frighteningly well is another thing altogether. Maa takes the tried and tested not-without-my-daughter formula and spins it round and round until audiences are left frustrated at the actions of characters.

Do not mess with a mother. She can go to any extent to save her family. Mixing mythology and technology, ‘Maa’ presents Kajol as a contemporary woman fighting with all her might to keep at bay the dark forces targeting her young daughter. Ambika (Kajol) and Shuvankar (Indraneil Sengupta) have succeeded in keeping his family’s troubled history from the artistically-inclined Shweta (Kherin Sharma). But the 12-year-old’s constant curiosity coupled with a tragic incident leads the mother and daughter to travel to their ancestral haveli in Chandrapur in the Bengal countryside, where time seems to have come to a stand-still.

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.

After every few years, we have a female star taking on the role of a doting mother who morphs into a saviour of her child and family. It is a time-tested Bollywood formula for the heroine who is losing her space under the spotlight to play her age and yet remain central to the story. The template remains the same, but the public sentiment associated with the mother figure is such that the melodrama keeps getting recycled. From Jaya Prada in Maa to Sridevi in Mom and Raveena Tandon in Maatr, the mother magic has worked for several actors. This week, it is Kajol’s turn to take the mantle and remind the public that, given the opportunity, she can drive a narrative. While her male contemporaries are still romancing young girls, she has already played a couple of compelling mummy variants in Helicopter Eela and Salaam Venky.