Rating : 1/5 (Poor)
Genre : Horror
Year : 2018
Running time : 2 hours 8 minutes
Director : Amar Kaushik
Cast : Rajkummar Rao, Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Atul Shrivastav, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee, Vijay Raaz
Kid rating : PG-13
The small town of Chander is rocked by fear 4 days every year. Legend has it that during these 4 days of Puja, a ghost/bhootni “Stree” comes to town and abducts men who remain out of the home after dark. When local tailor Vicky (Rao) is smitten by a mysterious young woman (Kapoor) who says she comes to town only 4 days in a year, his friends are alarmed that Vicky might be falling in love with “Stree” herself.
The film is billed as a horror-comedy, with the horror stemming from legend, superstition and old wives’ tales. The film does well in sketching out the characters in the small town. Especially nicely done is Vicky’s character, and the easy camaraderie with his goofy friends Bittu (Khurana) and Jana (Banerjee). Tripathi as self-professed occult expert Rudra is a hoot, and Vijay Raaz makes an appearance as a zoned-out writer, who prophesies a solution to the bhootni problem.
However, the film soon devolves into silliness and stupidity. Stree also suffers from mixed messaging – the bhootni plaguing Chanderi is a feminist avenging the vile treatment of women – and while I can see that as appearing quite smart-alecky when writing the script, it doesn’t transfer as cleverly on screen. On one hand you have gibberish about witch potions and antidotes, and on the other you have women’s empowerment – that’s a combination I’d rather not see on screen.
While the small-town story sans the bhootni angle is well-done, the film becomes unwatchable once it goes into full-on ghost-fighting mode. There are some laughs, and some shock-value scares. But the going soon gets boring, the characters become progressively more and more dumb, and the movie wends its way forward without rhyme or reason. It was hard work just remaining seated in the theater. Matters are not helped by leading lady Kapoor, who displays a complete lack of acting ability.
Stree is best left unseen.
Kidwise: Some scary stuff for the young ones.
