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The return of Stree, one of the most awaited films of the year, could also be called The Advent Of the Headless Horror. The sequel to the 2016 original comes armed with its low-hanging fruits distinctly lower this time around. Nothing like dumbing down a sharp premise — yes, yes, it is women who have the power — but it is callow men who continue to have all the fun.
Six years after sleepy little Chanderi was swept up with the doings of a mysterious woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who ensnared Rajkummar Rao’s local ‘ladies tailor’ Vicky (still firmly pronounced as Bicky), another entity invades it, and starts targeting independent young women.
This monster is much more malevolent than the ‘chudail’, using its severed head as a weapon, towering over the terrorised townspeople, especially ‘azaad khayalon waali auratein’.
Vicky’s partners-in-crime, Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana), Jana (Abhishek Banerji), and the older-but-not-always wiser Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi), along with Mystery Woman, track it down to its lair, which looks like a cross between ‘Munjya’s dense forest and the caverns of ‘Lord Of The Rings’, and every other film set in caves, with layers of burning lava below.
The film, written by Niren Bhatt (the original creators were Raj and DK), consists of the gang rushing about pell-mell, throwing out one-liners channelling their earlier film, as well as sending up Bollywood celebs (‘disha batani’, and Disha Patani, haha), and generally act like feckless dolts, who somehow manage to do the right thing, despite themselves. Which seems to be the sweet spot perfected by Maddock Films — the adolescent horror comic — which primes its audience to laugh out loud even as the not-very-scary scares are piling up.
The memo seem to be to not go deep at any point: keep it silly, stupid. At one point, the film fetches up in the kind of mental institution that has disappeared from Hindi films for good reason: the inmates being shown in truly objectionable actions is inexcusable, even if the setting leads to one of the movie’s starry special appearances. Really? And despite all the frantic criss-crossing, I could feel the pace of the movie, never the best thing for a movie of this kind which wants you to suspend all disbelief for its duration.
The thing that makes the movie stick is the sheer likeability of the characters, led by Rao and helped along by the goofiness of the other three, as well as their ability to sustain being madcap. Their commitment to the silliness of their enterprise is unwavering– whether it is coming up against the inhuman glowing eyes of the ‘sarkata’, or by rushing in where angels would not tread. They also give us an all-too brief glimpse of the real monster, which is the power tyrannical men have to subjugate women, and when the red-sari clad women of Chanderi reclaim the night, it speaks to something that’s happening on our streets outside movie theatres.
Stay back for a post-credits appearance of another creature from the Maddock universe: monsters, they be back.
Stree 2 movie cast: Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurrana, Abhishek Banerji
Stree 2 movie director: Amar Kaushik
Stree 2 movie rating: 2.5 stars
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