Category Archives: Reviews

Movie Review: Kathal – A Jackfruit Mystery (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A young police inspector in a small town navigates challenges in her professional and personal life in the comedy Kathal: A Jackfruit Mystery. Writer-director Yashowardhan Mishra gets a lot right in his feature debut, even though the story loses focus as it goes on.

Sanya Malhotra plays Mahima Basor, a police inspector in the small town of Moba. She’s achieved a lot in her short career and her superiors are pleased with her work, but some of the male constables who work under her quietly resent taking orders from a woman.

Further complicating matters is that one of those constables is her boyfriend, Saurabh Dwivedi (Anant Joshi). He supports Mahima’s career success, but his dad refuses to let them marry until Saurabh is promoted to inspector, too.

Fresh off Mahima’s arrest of a notorious gangster, she is assigned an even more important case — find the thief who stole two jackfruits off the tree in politician Munnalal Pateria’s (Vijay Raaz) garden. These aren’t just any jackfruits. They’re a special Uncle Hong variety that pickles exceptionally well.

Everyone except Pateria realizes what a ridiculous misuse of police resources this endeavor is. It’s funny to watch Mahima roll her eyes in the background as the investigation stirs up lingering resentments between Pateria and his son-in-law, which gets everyone else in the family involved.

This is when the story is at its best — as an interpersonal comedy that happens at an intimate scale, in a town small enough where everyone knows each other’s business. For example, no detail of the theft is too small for enthusiastic local reporter Anuj (Rajpal Yadav), who has little other news to cover.

Kathal loses its way when it expands the story beyond Moba’s borders into other villages, and the investigation uncovers more serious crimes. Pateria’s family recedes in importance, which is a shame because the characters and their influence over the town make the movie a lot of fun.

The plot gets diluted as the scope broadens. While the crime at the heart of the jackfruit case is trivial, what it reveals about power and police accountability is not. Same goes for the conflict that arises within Mahima’s relationship with Saurabh.

The introduction of weightier material doesn’t make Kathal any more important of a film. It was important already. Kathal is very close to being a very good movie. But the escalation in its latter stages overextends the runtime and distracts from the characters and a location that made up such an enjoyable, well-defined world.

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Movie Review: Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar (2023)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

I’m skeptical about any Luv Ranjan project. The filmmaker owes his career to the unfortunate box office success of sexist comedies like 2015’s deplorable Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2. So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Tu Jhoothi Main Makkaar.

Ranjan’s objective with Tu Jhoothi Main Makkar (TJMM, henceforth) is simple: show sexy people having a good time in exotic locations accompanied by a catchy soundtrack with some big dance numbers. To that end, it’s mission accomplished.

Ranbir Kapoor plays Mickey Arora, son of a wealthy, tight-knit family. In addition to helping run one of the family’s businesses — how his periodic strolling through an auto showroom helps is anyone’s guess — Mickey runs a secret side operation orchestrating breakups. He and his buddy Manu (Anubhav Singh Bassi) stage elaborate schemes on behalf of lovers who want to ditch their partners with minimal hard feelings or reputational damage.

While accompanying Manu on a trip to Spain to celebrate his engagement to Kinchi (Monica Chaudhary), Mickey falls for Kinchi’s gorgeous best friend Tinni (Shraddha Kapoor). Despite her reservations about dating a guy who’s never had to work for a boss who isn’t also his dad, Tinni and Mickey grow closer while frolicking in swimwear and cavorting about town. Both Kapoors look incredibly fit in this film, and their dance numbers are a lot of fun.

Mickey and Tinni return to Delhi and make things official, first by introducing Tinni to Mickey’s family. The Arora’s have no chill and quickly monopolize all of the couple’s time. This isn’t a problem for Mickey, but it is for Tinni. She places a call to the breakup expert — who uses a modulator to disguise his voice — and asks for help ending her relationship with Mickey.

Only in the movies would Mickey not immediately recognize his own girlfriend’s voice. More movie cliches follow once Mickey figures things out, including his professional instructions for Tinni to make Mickey jealous with a fake ex-boyfriend and to try to make Mickey cheat with her fake beautiful friend. (The fake ex and the fake friend are played by Kartik Aaryan and Nushrratt Bharuccha, respectively, who both starred in Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2).

Much of the conflict in TJMM could have been avoided had the characters simply talked to one another, but at least they are motivated by doing what they believe the other one wants. That fits with Mickey’s business ethos of trying to minimize the emotional fallout from breakups, but the couple is slow to realize that they are really only punishing themselves by not addressing their issues directly. The film is thoughtful about the way the borders of a romantic relationship extend out to encompass the families of the two people involved.

That said, TJMM is inherently conservative and too centered on Mickey. We see details of Tinni’s life only as they relate to Mickey. His family gets ample screentime, but we only get brief glimpses of Tinni’s family. While the two male friends regularly talk about their romantic relationships with one another, Tinni and Kinchi never do.

In the course of running his breakup business, Mickey spouts off a bunch of simplistic maxims about the behavior patterns of men and women that sound old-fashioned and a bit sexist. There’s also a moment where Mickey vows to get revenge on Tinni for lying to him — an unfortunate callback to the cruel revenge plots that make up the second half of Pyaar Ka Punchnama 2.

Yet despite it faults, TJMM mostly has its heart in the right place. The characters really do try to do right by one another, even when their efforts are misguided. And the film hits all the right notes for the kind of upbeat, escapist fantasy it aspires to be.

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Movie Review: What’s Love Got to Do with It? (2022)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

The romantic drama What’s Love Got to Do with It? is unconvincing. The characters seem like they popped into existence just before the events of the movie, and they don’t act like real people.

Lily James stars as “award-winning documentary filmmaker” Zoe. Shazad Latif plays her lifelong pal Kaz, who’s a successful doctor. Zoe’s mom Cath (Emma Thompson) still lives next door to Kaz’s family, and the treehouse where Zoe and Kaz played as kids still sits in the Khan family’s backyard.

Cath is cringe personified, and not in an amusing way. She emerges from the Khans’ house after attending Kaz’s brother’s wedding and declares, “Wasn’t it so wonderfully exotic?” Keep in mind that Cath has known the Khans for at least two decades and has attended multiple family weddings and holiday parties thrown by her Muslim neighbors.

The “exotic” remark is thankfully a one-off, but Kaz has to explain to Cath and Zoe other racist indignities experienced by Pakistani-Brits that his lifelong white neighbors should know by now. It is a huge missed opportunity (and a crime against cinema, frankly) that legendary actors Emma Thompson and Shabana Azmi — who plays Kaz’s mother Aisha — never share a meaningful scene together, which could have provided a chance to address cultural and social issues in a more organic fashion.

Zoe and Kaz are both in their early thirties, and while Zoe is committed to staying single, Kaz is ready to settle down. Having failed to find a girlfriend on his own, he asks his parents to find him a bride via a matchmaker. Zoe pressures Kaz into letting her film the experience for a documentary about arranged marriage tentatively titled “Love Contractually.”

Even this move to film Kaz’s matchmaking process is exotifying. Would Zoe and the bros at the production house providing the funding find white people filling out eHarmony profiles or going on speed dates prestige documentary material? Unlikely, yet that’s what the early stages of Kaz’s process amount to. At best, it’s reality show fodder — and even then they’d have to compete with Indian Matchmaking.

When Kaz fails to click with any British women, he is introduced via Skype to a law student in Lahore named Maymouna (Sajal Aly, who played Sridevi’s stepdaughter in 2017’s Mom). Maymouna is utterly disinterested, but Kaz thinks she’s the one — mostly because she’s 22 and pretty. The Khans, Zoe, and her mom head to Lahore for the nuptials.

The movie takes the long way round to the inevitable conclusion that Kaz and Zoe are the ones who should be together. The meandering path involves a subplot where Zoe dates her mom’s dog’s veterinarian James (Oliver Chris), who she finds underwhelming even though he’s perfectly nice and cute. Zoe makes some equally questionable choices about her film that she springs on Kaz and his family without warning during a screening party. Why she would publicly ambush people she’s known and cared about her whole life is baffling.

For all Kaz’s complaints about not having chemistry with any of the women he’s met, he and Zoe have as much fizz as two-liter bottle of soda that’s been open for a week. Latif’s performance lacks energy, and James is undermined by a character who’s confoundingly written. What’s Love Got to Do with It? is as flat as its central romance.

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TV Series Review: Citadel (2023)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

This review covers the first two episodes of the Amazon Prime series Citadel.

Amazon’s newest spy series Citadel is fun and totally watchable, thanks to a great cast and a fun, high-concept plot setup.

Citadel is the name of an international spy organization that works for the global good, independent of any single nation. Their efforts are thwarted by an evil spy ring called Manticore that has its tendrils in governments around the world.

Citadel agents Nadia Sinh (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) and Mason Kane (Richard Madden) — who was destined from birth to be a spy with a name like that — are doing reconnaissance on a train in Italy when they realize they’ve been set up. Manticore blows up the train as part of a coordinated worldwide effort to destroy Citadel once and for all.

Mason survives but has total amnesia, except for visions of a beautiful woman in a red dress: Nadia, wearing the outfit she was wearing on the train. His American passport has an alias, so he doesn’t even know his real name.

Eight years later, Mason has a wife and a daughter, but he’s still troubled by the void of information from his past. When he sends a DNA sample to an ancestry company, it alerts one of Citadel’s surviving operators, Bernard Orlick (Stanley Tucci), who tracks down the missing agent and upends his life.

Of course, Nadia survived the train explosion as well, but she doesn’t play a major part again until Episode 2.

The series does a nice job balancing its action, drama, and humor. Tucci’s role is dryly comical and everything one would hope from from Stanley Tucci, The Spy. Madden does a lot of the heavy lifting in the first episode, and he does a very solid job.

From what I’ve seen of Chopra Jonas’s forays in Hollywood to date, they haven’t fully captured what a good actor she is. Citadel does. She gets to showcase a wide emotional range and an impressive set of fighting skills, demonstrating why she is a global star.

The series — which is intended to eventually spin off into global versions set in India, Italy, Spain, and Mexico in languages native to each country — does enough in its early episodes to set up a compelling first season. Bernard gets Mason up to speed while forcing him to resurrect his old career, thereby uncovering the remaining threats to Citadel, its personnel, and the world. It’s a fun setup that balances the personal consequences for the agents with wider, more nebulous dangers that hooked me right away.

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Movie Review: Polite Society (2023)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Polite Society is a raucous good time. Stories about sisterhood should always have this much martial arts action.

British high school student Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) knows what she wants to be in life: a stuntwoman. She records her moves for her YouTube channel, shouting, “I am the fury!” in her garden while her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) holds the camera.

Lena’s future isn’t so clear. She dropped out of art school, and now she mopes around in bed until Ria literally drags her out of it.

The girls’ parents Fatima (Shobu Kapoor) and Raff (Jeff Mirza) are supportive of their oddball daughters, but the pressure from their Pakistani-British social circle is mounting. There are only so many ways to deflect thinly-veiled insults.

It’s a surprise when the middle class Khans are invited to an Eid celebration at the mansion of one of the wealthiest women in the group, Raheela Shah (Nimra Bucha). It’s even more of a surprise to Ria when Lena chats with Raheela’s handsome doctor son Salim (Akshay Khanna) and actually appears to be enjoying herself.

Ria is convinced that there’s something suspicious about the Shahs. Why else would Salim and his mom take an interest in artsy Lena? Ria enlists her hilarious friends/sidekicks Alba (Ella Bruccoleri) and Clara (Seraphina Beh) to find dirt on Salim, but their spying only drives a wedge between the sisters. Is it so wrong for Lena to be happy receiving attention from a rich hunk who’s looking to settle down?

Polite Society has so much going for it that it’s hard to know where to begin. What is undeniable is Priya Kansara’s magnetism as Ria. Her performance commands attention and rewards it with an absolute star-making turn. She’s funny, snarky, and charismatic, and a total pro at the action sequences as well.

The martial arts fight scenes in Polite Society are terrific, smoothly integrated into the plot but surprising all the same. Though the fights are used for comic effect, they are totally hardcore — a delightful subversion of gender tropes given that the fights take place mostly between women in women’s spaces (a girls high school, a widow’s mansion, Ria’s bedroom, etc.).

Ritu Arya’s Lena is quite the fighter, too, as is Nimra Bucha as Raheela. Fresh off her turn as the villain in the Disney+ series Ms. Marvel, Bucha is proving to be the go-to intimidating South Asian mom of the moment. Arya plays off of Kansara beautifully, making the sisters’ relationship feel familiar and believable.

The Khan parents provide the moral center of the film in a subtle way. In contrast with Raheela’s eagerness to find a bride for Salim, the Khans are content to let their girls find their own way. While they are aware that marriage and family are a potential path to stability (and one that would make it easier for Fatima to socialize with the other moms), they aren’t pushy about it. Fatima encourages Lena to date Salim because it seems to make Lena happy. As long as the girls aren’t getting into serious trouble, their happiness is all that matters to their parents.

Filmmaker Nida Manzoor’s fresh screenplay and direction deftly mix social commentary with a lot of laughs — and plenty of flying kicks. Polite Society is a top-class effort from a young filmmaker to watch.

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Movie Review: Mrs Undercover (2023)

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0.5 Star (out of 4)

Watch Mrs Undercover on Zee5

The action comedy Mrs Undercover is agenda-driven, not story-driven or character-driven. It’s not even clear who the intended audience is for this film that wants to promote women’s empowerment but doesn’t treat the issue with any sophistication.

Instead of first introducing its main character, Durga (Radhika Apte) — a seemingly ordinary housewife — Mrs Undercover opens with the villain, Ajay (Sumeet Vyas): a serial killer who preys on strong, independent women. We hear him beat the feminist lawyer he has tricked into having a date with him before we watch him run over her repeatedly with his car.

This misstep immediately puts the focus on the man committing violence against women, and not the woman who will (ultimately) stand up to him. The very first woman we meet is a victim, and we witness her brutal death.

Ajay goes by the alias “The Common Man,” and he records his victims confessing their crimes against masculinity before murdering them. For some reason, literally everyone in India has their phone set to alert them when The Common Man posts a new video. Why? Who knows?

The special task force assigned to find The Common Man has one last chance to learn his identity. Turns out an undercover agent whose contact information was misplaced happens to live in Kolkata, The Common Man’s new hunting ground. That secret agent is Durga.

Durga married sexist, conservative Dev (Saheb Chatterjee) to establish her cover. But with no word from the special force in a decade, Durga went ahead and started a family. When task force chief Rangeela (Rajesh Sharma) assigns her to the case, she’s not willing to disrupt her family’s routine to do so.

Rangeela’s attempts to bring Durga back into the fold are the funniest part of Mrs Undercover. He surprises her by showing up in odd places wearing disguises that don’t fool anyone.

Sadly, that’s it as far as the laughs go. The dialogue is uninspired, as far as I could tell. Only the Hindi words are subtitled, with the rest reading “???Bengali.” The action scenes are forgettable, too.

That’s because the point of Mrs Undercover isn’t to entertain, but to educate. Somber piano music plays whenever characters launch into heavy-handed speeches about how housewives are special and should be treated with respect. Religious references abound, such as naming the main character Durga and lauding women for managing their households as though they have ten hands.

I’m not sure who writer-director Anushree Mehta is trying to persuade. It’s not like men who look down on women don’t realize they do so. Durga’s husband Dev isn’t a controlling jerk by accident. When Dev’s mother (played by Laboni Sarkar) tries to convince him to allow Durga more freedom, it’s as though Mom has only just realized that her married adult son with whom she lives is sexist.

The characters feel like they came into being just before the events of the film, to serve the purposes of the screenplay. This is especially true in the case of a woman who is one of The Common Man’s accomplices. Why would she agree to help a man who is literally murdering women for refusing to be subservient? We’ll never know, because Durga shoots her before she can explain herself.

Mrs Undercover opens the door to all kinds of feminist issues, only to abandon them or treat them in a simplistic way. Durga joins a Women’s Empowerment group at a local college, and most of the attendees express a desire to start their own businesses. The men running the group instead teach them a choreographed dance routine.

Because the film addresses issues at such a surface level, it doesn’t even realize that movie’s the ultimate message to women is that it isn’t enough to be “just a housewife.” Durga saves the day using skills she learned as a special agent, not abilities she picked up once she started her family. Were she to have succeeded using those skills, the movie might have made a point about all women’s work deserving respect.

The ending assumes that justice is best served via eye-for-an-eye physical retribution meted out individually. Even then, it’s up to women to do the dirty work themselves while men stand and watch. That’s not catharsis. It’s more forced labor for women that absolves men of the work of holding other men accountable. Who does Mrs Undercover think will find this satisfying?

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Movie Review: Joyland (2022)

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3.5 Stars (out of 4)

Joyland — Pakistan’s entry for Best International Feature at the 95th Academy Awards — opens in theaters across the United States in the coming weeks.

A seemingly content family in Lahore disintegrates when they fall back into patriarchal patterns in the film Joyland — an ironic title if there ever was one.

Haider (Ali Junejo) and his wife Mumtaz (Rasti Farooq) live with his elderly father (Salmaan Peerzada), Haider’s older brother Saleem (Sameer Sohail), Saleem’s wife Nucchi (Sarwat Gilani), and their four young daughters. Mumtaz is a talented makeup artist who works outside the home, while Haider cooks and helps with his nieces. It’s a slightly unconventional setup for this otherwise traditional family, but it works.

Everything changes when Haider’s friend finds him a job. Running the household is too much for Nucchi to manage alone, so Father decides that Mumtaz will quit her job and stay home. Mumtaz’s objections are ignored, and Haider is too timid to stand up to his dad.

The thing is, Haider’s new job isn’t exactly “respectable.” He’s a backup dancer in an erotic dance theater. He tells his dad that he’s the theater manager, but he’s honest with Mumtaz about what he does.

What Haider fails to tell his wife is that he’s infatuated with the starlet he dances behind — a transgender woman named Biba (Alina Khan). It’s not just that Biba is beautiful, but she has all of the self-respect and willpower that Haider lacks. She’s learned how to stand up for herself because no one else will. Her confidence — coupled with the freedom Haider experiences upon being liberated from his oppressive house — inspires him to act more boldly than he ever has, including starting an affair with Biba.

The fallout from Haider taking his new job is a mess of isolation, secrecy, conservative gender expectations, and unmet sexual needs for multiple members of the family. Trapped in the house, Mumtaz becomes all but invisible to everyone, including Haider. She goes through the motions of being excited when she finds out she’s pregnant with a boy — all of the accolades for said feat go to Haider — but she longs to escape.

No one in the family is happy, even with the household operating exactly the way Father wants it to. Rigid adherence to expectations makes everyone miserable when it requires erasing individual identities to do meet them. Biba is unique in asserting her own identity, but it comes at an enormous cost to her as well.

Saim Sadiq’s writing and directing of his first feature film are excellent, as is Joyland‘s talented cast. All the women in the ensemble are terrific at eliciting sympathy for their characters, particularly Rasti Farooq as Mumtaz. Ali Junejo’s job has an extra challenge because Haider is legitimately frustrating at times, but he’s a man ill-equipped to live as his authentic self within the confines of his family. No matter how exasperating his behavior, the root of everyone’s problems is a strict set of social norms that punishes individuality for no discernible benefit.

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Movie Review: Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga on Netflix

Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga is Netflix India’s most broadly appealing Original movie to date. The high-concept heist film set aboard a passenger jet feels like a ’90s throwback, in a good way. It’s an entertaining thriller — so long as you don’t think about it too critically.

Yami Gautam stars as Neha, a flight attendant for a Middle Eastern airline who is swept off her feet by a charming passenger, Ankit (Sunny Kaushal). Their whirlwind romance hits turbulence when creditors come after Ankit to replace some stolen diamonds. His financial troubles become more urgent when Neha learns that she is pregnant.

Ankit’s plan is to steal some diamonds while they are transported from a fictional Middle Eastern country to India aboard a passenger flight, but he needs Neha’s help to pull of the heist. Neha’s own father was a thief, and while she vowed to keep her baby away from a life of crime, Ankit’s plan seems like the only way forward.

The plane that Neha, Ankit, and the diamonds are on is hijacked by extremists who demand that a dissident jailed in India be set free. This is a good setup for a story.

Some novelists who write without outlines talk about creating characters, putting them into situations, and letting the nature of the characters dictate how they get out of trouble. It doesn’t feel like that’s how Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga was written. The outcome was decided first, then the characters actions were reverse-engineered to achieve that outcome, with mixed results here.

If the only goal is to surprise the audience, that might be a reasonable way to construct a screenplay — but it requires detailed attention to continuity and character motivation. When the film is over, the audience should not ask, “Would the characters really have acted that way?” Unfortunately, that question lingers at the end of Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga.

That said, it is possible to watch Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga without getting hung up on details. Yami Gautam is quite good as a woman in a difficult position with high stakes for her and the people she loves. Sharad Kelkar is also solid as the intelligence officer brought in to investigate the hijacking. The first two-thirds of the film moves along at a good clip.

Things bog down during the investigation, as the truth is explained via flashbacks. The dialogue writing also gets annoying, especially when the passengers deplane and intelligence officers call out the names of the people they’d like to interrogate. Instead of just calling out a couple of times, they do so repeatedly. They yell, “Who is the flight marshal?” seven times, “Who is Bhanu Yadav?” nine times, and “Neha Grover?” a full eleven times.

Chor Nikal Ke Bhaga isn’t perfect, but it’s suitable Saturday night popcorn fare — and you don’t have to leave your house to watch it.

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Movie Review: Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat (2023)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Two sets of doppelgängers in two different countries make bad decisions in the name of young love in Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat, the latest film from writer-director Anurag Kashyap. The romantic drama putters along before taking a wild turn that comes out of nowhere.

The two pairs are played by Alaya F and newcomer Karan Mehta. In India, DVD seller Yaqub (Mehta) follows high school student Amrita (Alaya) around like a puppy. In England, rich girl Ayesha (Alaya) hounds DJ Harmeet (Mehta), the first guy who’s ever rejected her advances.

It’s unclear exactly how old the characters are. This info is important not only because it sheds light on the characters’ relative maturity levels, but because age of consent plays a part in the England storyline. It’s also important because it could clarify the characters relationships to each other. If he’s 19 and she’s 17, it’s quite different than if he’s 19 and she’s 13.

Both storylines happen in the same reality, and the glue that connects them is DJ Mohabbat (Vicky Kaushal). The pairs are inspired by the musings on the nature of love that DJ Mohabbat shares on his podcast. But for us in the movie’s audience, his monologues aren’t that compelling, and they kill the plot momentum.

Yaqub and Amrita steal her brother’s motorcycle in order to travel to DJ Mohabbat’s concert in another city. They get stopped along the way and hide out in an empty summer cottage. She’s pretty sure her family will forgive them for running off together, even though they locked her in a room just to keep her from talking to Yaqub, who is Muslim.

In England, Ayesha will not leave Harmeet alone. Instead of being turned off by her relentlessness, Harmeet says something about being scared to love her because of the intensity of her feelings for him (or similar nonsense that only movie characters say). They hook up. Then their story goes completely, violently off the rails.

It’s hard to watch young people make stupid choices for the sake of romance, whether in reality or in fiction. And there’s not necessarily anything new to be learned that Shakespeare didn’t cover in Romeo & Juliet 400 years ago. I’m not sure what the moral of Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat is.

Alaya F is an interesting performer, even when the characters she is given to play are kind of shallow. Karan Mehta gets some slack as a new actor, but some of the choices he makes are strange, such as Harmeet’s annoying laugh. Better guidance from Kashyap could’ve helped.

Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat just didn’t work for me.

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Movie Review: Gaslight (2023)

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2.5 Stars (out of 4)

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A young woman returns home to mend her relationship with her estranged father, only to find him missing in Gaslight. The creepy but unambitious mystery does just enough to keep viewers hooked until the end.

Meesha (Sara Ali Khan) hasn’t seen her father Ratan Singh Gaikwad since she was a little girl, before the accident that left Meesha unable to walk. Her childhood in the family’s ancestral palace was happy until Ratan had an affair with Rukmani (Chitrangda Singh). Meesha and her mother moved away, but Mom never got over the breakup and killed herself.

Years later, Meesha receives a surprise letter from her father asking her to come home for a visit. When she arrives, she’s greeted by Rukmani — now her father’s wife — who assures the young woman that Ratan is away on a work emergency and will return in a few days. But that night, Meesha sees a man she thinks is her father. She gets in her wheelchair and follows him to a remote part of the palace, only to fall down some stairs when she’s startled by a loud noise.

Though Meesha at first thinks that her father is in the house, a series of frightening incidents convince her that Ratan is actually dead — but no one believes her. Not Rukmani or the family physician Dr. Shekhawat (Shishir Sharma). Only sympathetic, handsome estate manager Kapil (Vikrant Massey) humors Meesha, while warning her to be careful of Rukmani and her allies.

Gaslight is legitimately frightening at times. Besides Meesha’s eerily preserved childhood bedroom, the palace is full of scary artwork. Bold is the homeowner who thinks Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son is suitable decor for a family abode.

The film could have pushed the spooky factor further by advancing Rukmani’s subplot in the story. At one point, she also begins to see things that aren’t there, which — had it happened in conjunction with Meesha seeing things at night — could have elevated the possibility of a supernatural cause for Ratan’s absence. Instead, Rukmani’s subplot isn’t highlighted until the second half of the film, after Meesha has already articulated her own, non-supernatural theory as to what is happening (a theory many in the audience will likely share by that point in the story).

Gaslight writer-director Pavan Kirpalani proved his ability to craft a chilling story with previous films like Phobia and Bhoot Police (both of which I thoroughly enjoyed). His latest feature leaves enough questions unanswered throughout to entice viewers to see things through, and the cast does a fine job with the material. Rahul Dev is good in a small role as a cop who is a more attentive investigator than he initially appears to be. It would have been nice if the film’s character development had avoided reinforcing traditional class hierarchy, but Gaslight doesn’t aspire to be more than what it is.

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