Tag Archives: Nushrratt Bharuccha

Movie Review: Chhorii 2 (2025)

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2 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Chhorii 2 on Amazon Prime

The followup to Amazon Prime Video’s 2021 folk horror flick Chhorii (“Girl“) doesn’t quite match the quality of the original. Chhorii 2 starts strong but meanders toward an unsatisfying conclusion.

Chhorii 2 takes place seven years after the events of the first film, which saw heavily pregnant Sakshi (Nushrratt Bharuccha) escape the clutches of her husband Rajbir (Saurabh Goyal) with the help of his former wife Rani (Pallavi Ajay). The two women now live together in a city, raising Rani’s daughter Ishani (Hardika Sharma) in a home owned by police inspector Samar (Gashmeer Mahajani).

Samar recounts the events of the first film and explains what happened immediately after. Rani and Sakshi walked to the police station where Samar worked. In order to protect Rani, Sakshi confessed to murdering Rajbir and his parents. When the women led Samar to the scene of the crime, the bodies were gone. Panicked Sakshi went into early labor, and Ishita was born. Samar’s sheltered them in his family home ever since.

One night, Ishita and Rani are kidnapped and taken to the fields surrounding Rajbir’s village. Sakshi and Samar follow, but Sakshi is nabbed, too, dragged into an underground complex of rooms accessible via wells in the field. The dry wells are evidence of the drought plaguing the village — a problem tribal leader Taau (Kuldeep Sareen) believes Ishita can fix.

The village worships an entity called Pradhan Ji that lives in a room at the bottom of one of the wells. He’s alternatively described as the deity responsible for the drought and the ancestor of the residents of the village, all of whom will die if Pradhan Ji does. The mythology at work is a little unclear. Taau’s solution is to get a new wife and servant for ancient Pradhan Ji, and Ishita is chosen even though she’s only seven years old.

The task of preparing the girl for the marriage ritual falls to Pradhan Ji’s current wife, Daasi Ma (Soha Ali Khan), whose very name means “servant.” In serving Pradhan Ji, Daasi Ma gained a few magical powers, including astral projection. Of course that comes at the expense of all of the other women and girls in the village, who live in subjugation to men if they aren’t killed right after birth.

The social justice message in Chhorii 2 is just as unmistakable as it was in Chhorii, yet writer-director Vishal Furia again closes his film with statistics about child marriage in India. If viewers can’t get the moral point from a story this unambiguous, they should stick to documentaries.

Even before the stats appear on screen, Chhorii 2 ends in disappointing fashion. In order to set up a third film — which is clearly Furia’s goal, even though one hasn’t been officially announced yet — Furia eschews a true cliffhanger and instead just cuts the story off mid-scene. It feels unfinished as-is, and it will be totally unsatisfying should a third film not materialize.

Chhorii 2 has the same creepy rural aesthetic that worked so well in the original movie, and the labyrinthine underground lair is unnerving. Sakshi’s navigation of the haunted maze is the film’s strongest sequence. The story becomes less compelling when it veers away from horror and into revenge territory. There’s little catharsis to be found when battling a misogynistic culture this violent.

Bharuccha again proves herself a capable lead performer. Khan doesn’t act with the same frequency she once did, so it’s fun to see her in this chilling role as the demonic bride. Little Hardika Sharma does a nice job, too.

Furia has built a compelling world for this franchise, and he’s taking a real gamble by not giving Chhorii 2 a distinct (if slightly ambiguous) ending. Here’s hoping it pays off and he gets to finish his story.

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Movie Review: Chhorii (2021)

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3 Stars (out of 4)

Watch Chhorii on Amazon Prime

Chhorii (“Girl“) isn’t an out-and-out scare-fest, but rather a thoughtful exploration of the real threats faced by expectant mothers.

Nushrratt Bharuccha carries the film as Sakshi, a woman 8-months pregnant with her first child. She loves the kids she works with at her charity in the city, and she’s particularly keen to make sure girls are given the same opportunities as boys.

When thugs beat up her husband Hemant (Saurabh Goyal) for not paying back a loan, the couple’s driver Kajala (Rajesh Jais) offers to let them hide at his family’s home in a remote village until they can figure out a plan. This seems risky given Sakshi’s condition, but Kajala assures them that his wife Bhanno Devi (Mita Vashisht) will be there to help.

Kajala drops them off outside of a labyrinthine sugarcane field and tells them to follow the path to the house. When they find the house, Bhanno Devi is welcoming enough, but her conservatism — such as making Sakshi wait to eat until after Hemant and Kajala have finished dinner — puts modern Sakshi on the back foot.

Then there’s the fact that Hemant doesn’t advocate on her behalf in that situation. Add that to Hemant’s belief that taking Sakshi far away from her doctors to a place with no cell service is a smart idea, and it raises some red flags, at the very least regarding his situational awareness.

Sakshi gets comfortable enough with Bhanno Devi that she okays Hemant’s plan to return to the city for a few days to raise some funds. As soon as he leaves, things get weird. Bhanno Devi’s mute daughter-in-law Rani (Pallavi Ajay) shows up, bearing an angry scar across her abdomen from when she lost her own fetus. And three mischievous little boys appear to Sakshi, asking her to come play with them.

Bhanno Devi is awful to Rani and short with Sakshi when the pregnant woman brings up the three boys. The older woman only ever calls Sakshi “chhorii” (“girl”), and insists that Sakshi follow her rules without question. And don’t get Bhanno Devi started on her former sister-in-law, whom she refers to as a witch.

The supernatural aspects of Chhorii don’t take center stage until the second half of the film, but with good reason. Writer-director Vishal Furia’s story (co-written with Vishal Kapoor and based on their Marathi film Lapachhapi) emphasizes that there are a lot of threats to Sakshi’s well-being beyond ghosts and witches. As sad as it is, she can only be sure of her own devotion to the health of her unborn child. Her understandable mistake in following the judgment of Hemant and Kajala ceded a dangerous amount of control.

Sakshi makes for a satisfying horror heroine. She’s trusting, but not naive; curious, but not reckless. Bharuccha does a nice job in the lead role and plays beautifully off of the undercurrent of menace Vashisht laces into her performance as Bhanno Devi.

Chhorii is most compelling when it leans into its folktale roots. Bhanno Devi tells a parable about a crow in a poisoned tree that is as sad as it is chilling. It’s a little disappointing and unnecessary when Furia includes real-world stats on female infanticide at the end of the film. The moral of the story is already clear as can be.

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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: Ram Setu (2022)

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1.5 Stars (out of 4)

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Ram Setu is interesting because it explains many of the limitations placed on the Hindi film industry by India’s current political environment, then proceeds to exemplify all of the problems it identifies. It’s a thought-provoking movie, albeit for the wrong reasons.

The story is set in 2007, allowing the filmmakers to plausibly deny that the movie is about present day India. Atheist archeologist Aryan (Akshay Kumar) discovers important artifacts in Afghanistan that reinforce the country’s connections to India via the Silk Road. Aryan notes that the whole region shares a cultural history, regardless which religion predominates, past or present.

It’s significant that writer-director Abhishek Sharma has his main character voice the merit of preserving history based on cultural import — which often aligns closely to religious import, to be fair — because Sharma spends the rest of the movie ignoring that nuanced sentiment in favor of pandering to religious zealots.

Aryan is hired by the Indian government to write a paper declaring that Ram Setu — a now-submerged land bridge connecting India to Sri Lanka — is a naturally occurring structure. This crucial step will allow shipping magnate Indrakant (Nassar) to demolish part of the bridge for speedier ocean transit. There are environmental concerns about the project, too, but they are nothing compared to the vociferous opposition by Hindu groups who believe that Rama himself built the bridge.

Aryan’s wife Gayatri (Nushrratt Baruccha) is a believer and warns Aryan against getting involved. He does anyway. Due to the ferocity of the protests, Aryan is scapegoated and suspended, and the couple’s son is bullied at school. Aryan figures that the only way to clear his name is to accept Indrakant’s offer to investigate Ram Setu personally and prove that it is not a man-made structure.

Indrakant and his villainous lackey Bali (Pravesh Rana) are condemned for demanding Aryan and the other researchers — including environmental scientist Dr. Rebello (Jacqueline Fernandez) and geologist Dr. Gabrielle (Jeniffer Piccinato) — cherry-pick their findings to support the bridge’s destruction rather than follow the evidence where it leads. Yet Ram Setu does the exact same thing. It lays out plenty of plausible counter-arguments, but it ends up with Aryan being converted and publicly declaring that God is real.

Sharma writes a couple of courtroom scenes in which the lawyer for the state argues that that even if Ram Setu was man-made, Aryan hasn’t proven that Rama was the one who built it. And further, why is the bridge’s significance to Hindus more important than its significance to Christians and Muslims? All these claims could fall under the cultural value statement that Aryan himself made earlier in the film, especially if they are considered collectively. But Aryan insists that Rama is the architect and that Hinduism’s claims on the bridge are the only ones that matter.

Based on the positions Sharma writes for the opposition, he knows what a movie that trusts in the intelligence of its audience would sound like. Unfortunately, he took to heart one of the lessons Aryan learns: don’t anger the mob. The end result is a movie that feels pandering, and therefore forgettable.

The adventure aspects of the film are not bad in concept, but there wasn’t the budget to execute them properly. There’s lots of obvious green-screen usage, with backgrounds and environments that feel fake. The practical sets that are used are pretty good.

Performances across the board are uneven, with Kumar being needlessly shouty at times. His emoting in the film’s lone dance number is unappetizing. Telugu star Satyadev Kancharana is a welcome addition to the story as helpful Sri Lankan tour guide AP.

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Movie Review: Hurdang (2022)

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Zero Stars (out of 4)

The social drama Hurdang fails to build a persuasive case for the odious politics it endorses.

Hurdang is set at a college campus in Allahabad in 1990. Local goon and opportunist Loha Singh (Vijay Varma) wants to increase his political profile. He seizes upon the announced implementation of the Mandal Commission’s recommendations — which would increase the number of university admissions and government jobs reserved for people from Other Backward Classes — as an opportunity to stoke unrest on campus and gain attention.

Loha uses his right-hand man Daddu (Sunny Kaushal) to activate the upper caste students at several area colleges. Daddu is enrolled in university, but you’d hardly know it since he never studies or goes to class. He carries multiple guns with him and is quick to point them at anyone who gives him even a minor hassle.

Daddu’s pitch to get the students to protest against the government is that the predominantly upper caste students currently enrolled in university have made their plans expecting a certain amount of government jobs to be available to them upon graduation, and that changing the rules now unfairly penalizes them. The movie makes only passing mention of the generational damage caused by systemic caste discrimination.

Writer-director Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s choice to put Daddu at the center of this story is absurd. Daddu has no chance of graduating as a result of his own (non-existent) efforts, so he plans to get the final exam questions from Loha in advance and cheat. He does not see his own cheating as being at odds with the system of meritocracy he believes exists and that the reservation system supposedly undermines. What matters to the narrative is that Daddu is a victim.

The notion of Daddu as a victim is even more ridiculous considering the privileges Daddu enjoys thanks to his relationship with Loha — and by extension the politicians Loha works for. Twice, Daddu steals a baton from a police officer and beats the officer with it, and he never faces any consequences for it. Daddu is above the law in almost every respect, but the film really wants viewers to feel sorry for him.

Bhat’s story is so lopsided that it barely acknowledges that people from lower castes exist, let alone suffer under a system rigged against them. Daddu’s much more academically talented girlfriend Jhulan (Nushrratt Bharuccha) is herself from a lower caste — a fact that’s only relevant for a scene in which her father tells her to wait until the reservation quota has been updated to take her finals so that she’ll have an easier time getting a government job. Jhulan is portrayed as virtuous for wanting to test right away and pass on her own merits. From the movie’s perspective, benefiting from a rule change is more egregious than stealing an exam and cheating.

The political position Bhat takes with his story is gross, but he doesn’t even do a good job of defending it. Hurdang is awful.

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