A rather bland ghost land
Ratings: ***** Excellent | **** very good |*** good | ** Average | * poor
A young girl, with a lantern in hand, tries to find her way out of a sugarcane field. Suddenly, she is dragged into an abandoned well, chained and all. This opening scene of ‘Chhorii 2’ refreshes Sakshi’s (Nushrratt Bharuccha) ordeal with paranormal activities in its prequel, which debuted on OTT in 2021.
Director Vishal Furia jogs our memory in more ways than one. In one of the sequences, Inspector Samar (Gashmeer Mahajani) narrates Sakshi’s life story to Sakshi herself in graphic detail!
Now that the link has been established between ‘Chhorii’ and ‘Chhorii 2’, the story moves from the small town in which Sakshi and her daughter Ishaani (Hardika Sharma) live, to the haunted village from which Sakshi escaped seven years back.
Sakshi teaches in a school and lives in a house that belongs to Samar’s family. Her ex-husband Rajbir’s third wife Rani (Pallavi) is also part of the family.
Ishaani suffers from a genetic condition that causes extreme sensitivity to sunlight. Her sun allergy, however, is perceived as a superpower by the villagers and that makes her the perfect choice to be the village Pradhanji’s child bride. By the way, this Pradhanji is no ordinary human being, he is aadi maanav (no, not a Neanderthal, but a half-human-half-monster-like creature). He needs to drink menstrual blood of young girls to survive. Gross!
If Furia in his earlier outing focused on the epicentre of the haunting activity, the abandoned well, in ‘Chhorii 2’ he takes his viewers to a catacomb-inspired underground structure. And this is where Ishaani is held captive by Daasi Maa (Soha Ali Khan), a witch who serves the Pradhanji by preparing young girls to be his brides!
Soha Ali Khan, who is seen on the big screen after a long time, is subtle and restrained as a witch in black, even while projecting her character’s supernatural powers.
Sakshi, inside the underground haveli, frees herself from her captors and looks for her daughter. Here, she encounters all sorts of paranormal entities — dead children, dead women, spectre; also her living husband Rajbir, who is baying for her blood.
Nushrratt gets the tone and tenor of her character right, which is a physically and emotionally exacting one. What more could she do when her role required her to run in circles calling out her daughter’s name for a good 15 minutes (or was it more?), or unite a bunch of ghosts to fight against misogyny, abuse and child marriage?
For all the action happening underground, there is a parallel action sequence on the ground too, with the oh-so-forgettable Samar and his police personnel indulging in a fist-fight with the hostile villagers.
Cinematographer Anshul Chobey has taken his brief seriously and manages to create an atmosphere for horror to unleash, sometimes with aerial shots, sometimes with 360º camera angle shots and sometimes he gives the feeling of impending doom by using red floodlights. If only those frequent ghostly apparitions didn’t spoil it. Furia’s ghosts are not scary, they are just annoying.
If Furia’s aim was to give out the message that ‘chhorrii chorron se kum nahi’ through this franchise, couldn’t he have opted for a narrative less overpopulated with ghostly figures? In fact, there are more ghosts than characters here.
Ishaani, who is the bright spot of the film, often asks people in the film, “Aap ullu bana rahe ho na?” I feel like asking Furia the same thing.
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