Shaitaan rests on two tried-and-tested templates — the happy family subjected to home invasion horror and Ajay Devgn as the saviour dad. Both have met with some level of success in the past and Shaitaan throws in occult mumbo-jumbo and a good-vs-evil story for good measure.
Shaitaan hits the ground running. Well, it has to, considering that almost every frame of what you get to watch in this 132-minute film was already made available two weeks ago in its two-minute trailer. Plus, it is a remake — of the 2023 Gujarati film Vash, with minor tweaks here and there — and hence, there are no surprises incoming.
Shaitaan kicks off on such a mushy, almost gooey note that you know that trouble is afoot. After all, horror never misses the address of a family that seems perfect — loving parents, happy-go-lucky kids, yearly international holidays and a luxurious farmhouse in the middle of nowhere to boot. The father (Kabir, played by Devgn) keeps a watchful eye on his children — that he creepily knows their phone passcodes is expected to pale in comparison to the horror let loose in the rest of the film — and the mother (Jyoti, played by Jyothika) has the kind of beatific demeanour that you know will be tested soon enough. Since this is Bollywood, there is the precocious, geeky kid (Dhruv, played by Angad Raaj) whose idea of cool is addressing his dad by his first name. The family’s daughter (Janhvi, played by Janki Bodiwala who reprises the same role she essayed in Vash), around whom the film revolves, is caught up with the usual teenage stuff, which includes boyfriend issues and a predilection for crash diets.
The plan for a relaxed weekend getaway for the family in their holiday home grinds to a halt when a stranger shows up. Vanraj (R. Madhavan), who had met the family at a dhaba a few hours earlier and struck up an easy camaraderie with Janhvi, walks in on the pretext of charging his phone. This is no ordinary guest but he overstays his welcome. Before we know it, he has Janhvi under his spell, with the girl willing to do anything he says — it starts from strange but innocuous stuff like chewing on a packet of tea leaves and ventures soon into territory as dangerous as turning a knife on her mother. As Vanraj — who describes himself as “Bhagwan” (or rather, the antithesis of it) — continues to control Janhvi like a puppet, it is up to Devgn to go to hell and beyond to counter the evil force that has forced itself on his family.
As the Drishyam films have shown, hell hath no fury like Devgn the screen dad whose daughter needs to be protected. Kabir, helpless in the face of an adversary who is always two steps ahead of him, ups his game towards the latter half of the film, displaying both physical prowess and mental agility to counter Vanraj. That makes for a largely engaging encounter between the two, but a large part of Shaitaan — after the initial stage has been set — involves too much of the same thing, recycled in rinse-repeat mode. The film limps (like most of its players do) towards what is an overcooked climax replete with the kind of occult gibberish that Bollywood has never been able to get rid of. The final act, which aims to throw in an element of surprise, works to some extent.
Shaitaan, to be honest, is fairly gripping if a superficially mounted thriller is what one is looking for. Madhavan brings in the perfect mix of sinister cockiness and wicked humour to his part, having fun even while supremely hamming it up. Director Vikas Bahl, attempting this genre for the first time, gets the beats of the torture-porn template predictably right.
But even as Shaitaan shows the psychological dismantling of a family, there is no time spent on Vanraj’s backstory or what propels his dark, gory actions. In the absence of that — as well as the fact that Google Maps and a voice note solve a series of missing persons cases even as cops twiddle their thumbs for months — has Shaitaan reduced to all sound (and we aren’t just talking about the gratingly loud background score) and fury signifying very little.
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