Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups

There are many bad films. I’ve seen bad films week after week. But there are bad films, and then there are really bad films. And then there is something like Geetu Mohandas’ Yash-starrer Toxic. The biggest problem with Toxic is not the lack of resources. In fact, it’s the opposite. The makers had everything you could possibly need to make a big, ambitious film: a superstar, a producer with money, a fantastic technical team, some of the biggest actresses, good music, huge sets, international locations and all the money required to create a spectacle. What they didn’t have was a good story.

Of course, Toxic has a narrator. How can it not? How can it not have the lazy storytelling device that’s quintessential of this brand of film that’s basically ‘stuti puranam’ (hymn of adoration) of the protagonist. How can we just have an introduction scene of Yash without a narration in the background that is all talk and no sense. How can he make a direct entry, without teasing the fans with glimpses of his hands, neck tattoo and cigar, before finally revealing his face. So, yes, Toxic has a narrator, the bazooka gun, small guns, big guns, big cigars, small joints, women, more women, beheadings, blood splattering, mutilated hands, mutilated legs and for good measure, also another Yash! What it doesn’t have is the depth and style it so badly attempts at.

Toxic: A Fairy Tale For Grown-Ups stomps to theatres with a busload of expectations and curiosity. The pairing of a distinctive filmmaker like Geetu Mohandas, who can twist and interrogate genres as she did in the wrenching Moothon (2019), and a superstar, Yash, is one of the most provocative bets to have surfaced in mainstream Indian cinema. It’s a great pity then Mohandas’ voice gets sanded under the crushing, loud antics of this blood-soaked saga around men, guns and guilt. There are stray glimpses that the filmmaker wants to say something about the nihilism of the violence that carry on from one generation to the next in a tired, self-defeating cycle. In a departure from genre staples, Mohandas also seeks to voice the intense self-loathing hidden underneath men on bloodthirsty rampages. However, Ujwal Kulkarni’s scattershot, frenzied edit constantly drains both poignance and any sustained mood.