Somewhere beneath the mumbo jumbo and mangled accents that make up Chhorii is the germ of an idea that could have hit home with its horror. Horror that is both at the surface level as well as subliminal. Chhorii attempts to make a statement against everything from patriarchy to female infanticide, from gender discrimination to blind belief, all through the prism of a horror tale with its roots in folklore, but its earnestness cannot make up for its execution. Or the lack of it.

Director Vishal Furia adapts his Marathi film Lapachhapi as Chhorii, but mistakes slow for slow-burn. At a butt-numbing 129 minutes, there are long stretches of practical nothingness in Chhorii. While the attempt clearly is to aim for atmospherics that will build on both horror and intrigue, the central premise of Chhorii, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video, is so weak, to the point of being hackneyed, that you will in all likelihood use your palm to suppress a bored yawn rather than use it to cover your eyes in genuine horror.

Perhaps the only bit of true horror in this film is keeping track of the spelling of its title and its protagonist. Nushrratt Bharuccha plays Sakshi, who, in her eighth month of pregnancy, is herded off from city to village by her husband Hemant (Saurabh Goyal) when he is unable to pay off his debtors. Sakshi ends up in a house with a courtyard — that we have seen in other Bollywood horror films before — the entrance to which is bordered (or rather blinded) by a maze of tall grass that will inevitably remind you of the highly forgettable Netflix film called, well, In The Tall Grass.

The first hour of the film has Sakshi ‘talking’ to her prosthetic stomach and smiling beatifically at anything within sight. She finds both a mother figure and a strict matron of sorts in the elderly village woman (played by Mita Vashisht) whose home she and her husband put up at. Punctuated by stretches that promise jump scares but end up in nothing, Sakshi chances upon a scarecrow, a woman with a cut belly, a trio of giggling children and a transistor humming a lullaby. The beatific smile stays put on her face, until she realises — too late, too late — that something’s not quite right.

I haven’t watched Lapachhapi, so I can’t quite comment on whether Chhorii is a faithful remake or not, but this film is clearly a case of squandered potential. Social horror/ thriller is a genre with immense possibilities — Jordan Peele’s Get Out is a prime example — but Chhorii isn’t able to effectively marry social commentary with horror. For even middling fans of the genre, the twist at the end is far too predictable to deliver a wallop.

True to its name, Chhorii is a rare film where the women essay principal characters, while the men are reduced to playing second fiddle. If only its intentions off screen were matched by its impact on it.

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CHHORII

Director: Vishal Furia

Cast: Nushrratt Bharuccha, Mita Vashishth, Saurabh Goyal, Rajesh Jais

Running time: 129 minutes