A road worker's plans to destroy the jungles of Northeastern India are foiled by a mystical creature with plenty of laughs along the way.
Jio Studios/Maddock Films

Bhediya’ Review: Overlong Bollywood Werewolf Comedy Delivers Powerful Environmental Message

Reviewed International Film Festival of India, Goa, Nov. 26, 2022. Running time: 152 MIN.

  • Production: (India) Jio Studios & Dinesh Vijan presentation of a Maddock Films Prod. production.
  • Crew: Director: Amar Kaushik. Screenplay: Niren Bhatt. Camera: Jishnu Bhattacharjee. Editor: Sanyukta Kaza. Music: Sachin Sanghvi, Jigar Saraiya.
  • With: Varun Dhawan, Kriti Sanon, Abhishek Banerjee, Deepak Dobriyal, Paalin Kabaak.
  • Horror-comedy has command Indian audiences in thrall since the first 2000s, with quite one hundred films within the genre being free. Amar Kaushik’s “Bhediya” (literally “wolf”), Bollywood’s 1st creature comedy, despite its effortful length, could be a marvelously entertaining romp through the jungles of Northeastern India that delivers pro-environment and anti-racism messages and additionally has the potential to become a franchise.

  • Top movie industry star Varun Dhawan plays Bhaskar, Associate in Nursing formidable Delhi-based road employee World Health Organization has encumbered his family target order to secure a contract to create a main road through the dense jungles of Arunachal Pradesh in Northeastern India, that borders China. he's in the midst of his cousin-german Janardhan (Abhishek Banerjee) and has locals Jomin (Paalin Kabaak) and Panda (Deepak Dobriyal) to assist. The catch is that he should get the permission of the native villagers. The village elders object, however Bhaskar convinces the youth that they have malls and “Netflix not nature.” With the assistance of native corrupt officers, he manages to urge enough signatures to swing the deal.To complicate things, Bhaskar has additionally been bitten badly on the posterior by a wolf and is treated by doc Anika (Kriti Sanon). The wound heals too chop-chop and Bhaskar finds himself turning into a lycanthrope by night, selecting off the officers World Health Organization approved the main road project one by one. Panda enlists the assistance of a 120-year-old non-Christian priest to show Bhaskar into an individual's, however the native police and militia area unit determined to search out each Bhaskar’s lycanthrope and therefore the wolf that bit him.

  • With this, his third film, Kaushik has established a convention of delivering robust social messages via a mass diversion package. His debut, horror-comedy “Stree” (2018), was a feminist fable, whereas “Bala” (2019) proscribed baldness and skin colour shaming. In “Bhediya,” the first message is to avoid wasting the surroundings and therefore the different Indian observe that's denounced is that the habit of describing individuals from the Northeast pejoratively as Chinese — an off-the-cuff racism that's prevailing within the remainder of the country. The messages area unit on the nose with no subtlety any, however that's the usually the simplest thanks to get them across to a mass audience, and Kaushik and his author Niren Bhatt manage that effectively.

  • The accent in “Bhediya” is a lot of on the usually juvenile and typically dirty comedy than the creatures. once the creatures do seem, it's a triumph of high notch visual effects, dead by the team that additionally worked on blockbuster “RRR” at London’s picture Co. Performances area unit wonderful throughout with Dhawan and Sanon carrying the film with ease, however the standout is Banerjee, Associate in Nursing actor World Health Organization will accomplish psychopaths and left-handed comics with equal felicity and temporal order.

  • With a time period of quite 2 and a 0.5 hours, the film overstays its welcome, combined by the standard movie industry speed breakers of song and dance and romantic interludes, that sporadically interrupt the lycanthrope tale plot. There area unit one or two of MCU-style Easter eggs within the finish credits and therefore the second of them places “Bhediya” squarely within the “Stree” universe. A franchise for certain beckons.