Shaitaan review: R. Madhavan steals the show in enjoyable supernatural thriller that provokes without clear purpose

R. Madhavan, Ajay Devgn and Jyotika in 'Shaitaan', which released in theatres on March 8, 2024. (Image source: X/@ajaydevgn

It’s round about the interval sequence that Shaitaan’s underlying message begins to somewhat uncomfortably surface. A young girl, possessed by the voice of a middle-aged man, does as he asks. To the point that she dances herself senseless, takes a knife to her mother’s throat and rejects all approaches of parental empathy. Is this a parable about the hoarse, but manipulative voice of toxic men controlling the immature and trusting bodies of young women? Or is this a story about a beleaguered father returning to teach a lesson in conformity and decency?

Unfortunately, Shaitaan’s curtains as daunting and provocative as they are from the outside, don’t quite match the sheets of meaning and substance. The film boasts able performances, a terrific sound design and some nail-biting sequences, without the credible connecting tissue of purpose.

Ajay Devgn plays Kabir, a doting father of two children married to Jyoti (a decent Jyothika). The first 15 minutes of the film establish Kabir’s knack for keeping an eye on his adolescent daughter’s activities –boyfriends, live locations and what password she uses on her phone. The setup is acutely manicured; a family so happy, joyous and entitled, its nightmare-in-waiting will bloodily unpeel each layer of protection and provision it takes for granted.

This nightmare obviously arrives in the form of Vanraj, played by the movie-stealing Madhavan in a role tailor-made for his aloof self. The family encounters Vanraj at a dhaba on their way to a farmhouse, where he later shows up in a supernatural twist on the home invasion genre.

Vanraj’s ammunition as the trailer has given away is the daughter, Janvi, played with great authority by Janki Bodiwala. The rest of the film doesn’t so much as deal with the devil’s details, his hairy motivations, but with the frenzied geometry of survival.

On the face of it, Shaitaan offers pretty much the extended version of its one-line premise. A stranger enters a family home, possesses the daughter and turns her against the authoritative but ultimately collegial voice of her parents. This intruder wants to take the girl with him – as some sort of property - and is willing to turn the heat of occupation to levels that will crush whatever form of subterfuge or resilience the parents can muster.

At some point Vanraj’s control of Janvi turns grotesque enough to become unwatchable. Again, the provocations are well-packaged, effectively wresting you away from the expectations of horror towards the unspecified ropes of mutiny. The sight of an unruly, young woman violently rejecting both candour and caution is a surreal sight that though pivotal, is somewhat crushed by broader boilerplate – devil, black magic, sacrifices, etc. - stuff.

Directed by Vikas Bahl, Shaitaan is led by committed actors, in no small part by the young Bodiwala who offers a stirring showcase of menace and madness. But it’s Madhavan, whose mix of unsubtle grandness, mischief and at times sheer resentment that steals the show.

Vanraj embodies the kind of evil that gets bored, can’t accommodate fragility and has little time for addressing moral turpitudes. The fact that he mixes English with chaste Hindi and plays video games on his phone while a family implodes around him, pencils him in as a post-modern miasma without the outline of an emotional shape. It’s fascinating for a shadow-less monster but for the larger intent of a film, it fills blanks with wider, abandoned blanks.

Shaitaan has been classily put together, is well-acted and grips you as a cascade of perturbing events. The problem is that none of it ever seems to root itself in commentary or nuance of any sort. There is a thin allegorical veil connecting everything, from the paper-thin back story of the intruder, his mention of a daughter, the colour of a certain voodoo doll and a mismatch of names at the death. But all of it feels deliberately suppressed in favour of pyrotechnics that deliver a hammy, rushed climax. A climax where a father bizarrely saves the day to only utter the clinching dialogue of ‘a mother’s love being godly’. You can’t tell from the target, what was ever the aim of it all.

Shaitaan is a decent survival thriller that doesn’t spook as much as it makes you squirm with contempt. It comes close to being an indictment of patriarchal attitudes, without having the conviction to actually allow that message to helm the entertainment. The latter is present, in multitudes of blood-spilling brutality but the former remains hamstrung, conspicuously undermined till the very last. It’s one of the few times in Hindi cinema that you’re rooting for the underlying commentary to punch through the ceiling of body horror tropes and some pretty distasteful violence to show itself. For the sake of revelation, however, clammy as opposed to revulsion. Shaitaan isn’t poor, but maybe a bit self-enamoured about its ability to push boundaries without ever picturing the meaning of destinations that lie beyond them.