Team FC
A little Kubrick stare goes a long way. The head lowered, eyes peering upwards stance (used to denote insanity in Stanley Kubrick's movies) is overused to the point of exhaustion in Adhura.
It’s the second series this year, after School of Lies, to examine the horrors of a boarding-school experience, but where the Disney+ Hotstar show was a thoughtful exploration of what its characters were haunted by, Adhura’s blunt focus is on more literal specters.
This is a show that relies so much on crafting an overall atmosphere of tension – foley effects of bones cracking, a child bolting upright in bed at night, a shadow reflected on a metal glass, jump scares, ominous whispers, flickering lights – that any interiority is relegated to second place.
Children and horror movies have long been an obvious pairing, either as an easy appeal to emotion when they’re placed in situations of strife, or as a means of unnerving the audience. In Adhura, however, the Kubrick-staring child (Shrenik Arora) is a passive observer in his own life, with no discernible personality of his own and no agency over his actions.
Despite this being a show in which the characters explicitly acknowledge and experience the supernatural, they remain oblivious when it comes to piecing together the larger puzzle. Fifteen years pass over the course of Adhura, but every episode feels like an eternity.