★★★
“The anti-Dexter.”
This is the kind of film which I’d say was enjoyable, rather than being good. Indeed, if you want an illustration of the difference between the two, this movie is a good example. Sona Mukherjee (Fernandez) is the wife of respected doctor, Mrityunjoy Mukherjee (Bajpayee). But their life is upended when the bodies of six, formerly pregnant, unmarried women are found on their property. Sona believes her husband was framed – possibly by police inspector and former boyfriend Imran Shahid, (Raina). She takes the advice of a dubious lawyer, who suggests that if the serial killer was shown to be still active, that would prove her husband’s innocence. So Sona kidnaps another expectant young woman, Anushka Tiwari (Khan) to provide a seventh victim. Only… well, Sona is a bit crap as a serial killer, and Anushka is a feisty little thing with a black-belt in taekwondo, pregnancy be damned.
I’m tagging this as horror and comedy, on the basis that it shouldn’t be taken seriously in the slightest. I’m fairly sure this approach is quite intentional, though with Bollywood, it’s rarely possible to be entirely certain. But there are just so many ludicrous elements, not least the central premise, that it definitely works best as a parody of lurid potboilers. For example, Indian police have apparently never heard of DNA testing, and feel that one body is pretty much as good as another. It’s also possible to trigger an immediate, devastating asthma attack, by crushing up flowers in your hands, and then blowing them in your target’s face. I thought that kind of thing only ever worked in a professional wrestling ring.
That all said, I still enjoyed it, not least for the way everyone takes it Very Seriously. It’s at its best when Sona and Anushka are facing off, the “killer” initially trying to convince her victim she has been captured by a man – an aspect as poorly considered as the rest of her plan. The contrast between the two make for amusing confrontations, such as Anushka spitting back, mockingly, “Trying to scare me with your psycho stare? I can do better. Here!” I was disappointed that they ended up taking a back-seat during the final act [for if her husband was not responsible for the six corpses… who was?] It’s still no less lurid, combining operatic music and disco lighting, in a basement festooned with a plethora of IV drips, for no reason beyond it looking cool.
It all ends in a final twist which makes about as much sense as the rest of it i.e. not very much. I won’t spoil it, but will tell you, it does not provide what I actually wanted to see, which was Sona and Anushka teaming up to go all Natural Born Killers on the real perpetrators. That would have been too much to hope for. Yet I can’t deny I was still amused enough, and wished Lifetime TVM were more like their South Asian counterparts.
Dir: Shirish Kunder
Star: Jacqueline Fernandez, Manoj Bajpayee, Mohit Raina, Zayn Marie Khan