Shaitaan Review: Madhavan, Ajay Devgn Play Devil vs Dad in Sordid Supernatural Thriller

Director: Vikas Bahl
Writers: Aamil Keeyan Khan, Krishnadev Yagnik

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Janki Bodiwala, R. Madhavan, Jyotika, Anngad Raaj

Duration: 132 minutes

Available in: Theatres

The first 10 minutes of Shaitaan introduce the sort of family that’s destined to suffer because they’re too happy. It’s the Indian-movie thumb rule: The happier they are, the higher the stakes. Conversely, the American-movie thumb rule is: The more dysfunctional they are, the juicier the stakes. There’s Kabir (a Drishyam-lite Ajay Devgn), the indulgent dad who keeps a watchful eye on his kids (read: he knows all their passwords and disguises a threat – “I will find you in any corner of the globe” – as fatherly affection). There’s Jyoti (a committed Jyotika), the firm but loving mom. There’s Dhruv (Anngad Raaj), yet another annoying eight-year-old who speaks like an adult and addresses his father by his first name. And there’s Janvi (Janki Bodiwala), the teenager neck-deep in the world of cellphones, boyfriends and zero-carb diets. The parents aren’t controlling: Janvi is allowed on a Ladakh trip as long as she calls them every day. They let her live. 

The bubble bursts when the family’s farmhouse holiday is gatecrashed by a stranger. (This stranger’s entitlement makes him look uncannily like an older version of the Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein (2001) hero). It starts at a highway dhaba, where this seemingly normal man, Vanraj (Madhavan), casts a spell over Janvi. Soon, he reaches their villa and turns Janvi into his puppet; the hypnotised teenager obeys his increasingly creepy instructions. Vanraj declares himself a God, and vows to reclaim the authority and control that he thinks humans – and families such as these – have begun to lack. Basically, he’s a very bored devil with a night to spare. The way he mercilessly orders Janvi around, he looks like a director exploiting his crew under the pretext of freestyle film-making.

Fetishising Black Magic

Helmed by Vikas Bahl, who has been mired in controversy since 2018, Shaitaan is the remake of a hit Gujarati film called Vash (2023). It visibly suffers from first-horror-movie syndrome, where a film gets so obsessed with its own reflection in the mirror – atmosphere, visuals, sound, camera movements – that it forgets to tell a story. The result is strangely narcissistic. A one-line premise is stretched into a vacant exhibition of craft and suspense-building. The irony is that the scenes are well constructed; when viewed in isolation, they look fine. Take the moment where the police arrive to check on them – the framing, pacing, cutting and lighting (especially the pool water reflecting on the walls) sync nicely with the tension of the family members having to pose like nothing is wrong. Take another moment in which Janvi is told to kill her brother; the terror of everyone in the house – including a possessed Janvi – is palpable. Janki Bodiwala’s physical performance is hard to watch but, unlike the film itself, that’s a good thing. 

Yet, when these scenes are stitched together to form a sequence and a rhythm, they feel like empty provocation. Most of Shaitaan is monotonous in how it rinses and repeats the same gimmick: Vanraj humiliates Janvi, Janvi attacks her family. That’s all it is – a showreel of pump-scares and Madhavan gestures. Just like Vanraj gets a kick out of tormenting the family, the movie seems to get a kick out of agitating its viewers. In doing so, it crosses the line quite often, hammering in the sight of an unhinged middle-aged man dominating a teenager for no particular reason. (The silly climax reinforces how futile Vanraj’s stunt was). 

Muddled Meaning

A lot of the film straddles the torture-porn genre, not to mention the fetishisation of the very black magic it claims to not endorse. By the second hour, the narrative purpose of Shaitaan becomes incidental to its grandstanding. The frame rates and volume increase, the pace decreases, and it’s like watching a cinematic embodiment of procrastination – you wonder if the movie even remembers what it’s about. In other words, if beating around the bush were an artform, Shaitaan would walk away with the (face)Palme d’Or. The staging isn’t smart either. An early scene shows Dhruv editing a family-vacation video on his laptop – a hobby so peculiar that you know there’s going to be a climactic callback to his tech-savviness. Later on, a dripping phone is dried in a container of grain, and you instantly sense that this device will come handy once Vanraj becomes just another shameless guest from hell.  

All the prolonged swag can be forgiven if a supernatural thriller conceals some commentary within. But its vanity aside, the downfall of Shaitaan is that the broader meaning is never quite clear. Is it a simple good v/s evil battle? Does Vanraj represent the patriarchy of tradition and its stranglehold over women? Or did he have a daughter who eloped? Is it about teenage rebellion and the fruits of liberal upbringing? Is the movie a blatant metaphor for how parenthood is the strongest religion? Or is it all of the above? Or is Shaitaan just a platform to prove that fear is tedium with nowhere to go? By the time Vanraj tells Janvi to unzip her shorts after she wets them, I was silently begging the film to stop hemming and hawing – and pick a decent lane. But perhaps the point is that there was no point. In terms of a titillating fable about subservience and violence, that’s the real horror. There’s nothing scarier than a film that acts intimidating because it can.