Whether you are a bona fide thriller fan or not, the plot twist on which Gaslight hinges much of its intrigue can be spotted a mile away. That’s primarily because the film has such few characters and even less layers that once you strike the most probable suspects out of the list, it isn’t tough to zero in on the culprit. In fact, Gaslight reveals the perpetrator with half an hour to spare, and then goes back and forth in time to uncover both modus operandi and motivation. But very little of it sticks or even comes together to make for a compelling watch.
Director Pavan Kirpalani — who has earned his thriller stripes with the highly engaging Ragini MMS and the high-onatmospherics psychological thriller Phobia — more or less ticks off the boxes that go into a decently made edge-of-the-seat watch. A young princess (Meesha, played by Sara Ali Khan) returns to the palace in Gujarat that she grew up in, after being estranged from her father for 15 years. She expects to see him, but is told he’s away on a work trip, with only her stepmother Rukmini (Chitrangda Singh) around to keep her company, with the two often being at loggerheads.
Meesha, confined to a wheelchair after an accident, quickly realises something is amiss, suspecting that her father (played by Shataf Ahmed Figar) is dead. What’s more, Meesha starts seeing things, including visions of her dead father. Keeping the film’s title in mind, no one in the house believes her, even questioning her sanity. The only one who has faith in Meesha’s fears is Kapil (Vikrant Massey), the loyal manager of the estate.
Gaslight, streaming on Disney+Hotstar, is more slow than slow-burn, with things plodding on painfully in the first hour. Kirpalani takes time to build his characters and situations, and yet everything comes off as halfbaked. Predictability is the bane of Gaslight and stereotypes abound, especially in the way its characters are written.
Which is a pity because Gaslight squanders what is a promising premise and a setting which is ripe for the telling of a noir thriller. Protagonists confined to wheelchairs have given us some compelling horror films, the most potent among them being Hitchcock’s Rear Window. It’s a horror film trope that heightens the drama and reinforces the tension because you know that once the scares hit the roof, the inability of the person to make an escape easily will only add to the terror. In the case of Gaslight, however, the writing is too predictable and placid to milk this effectively. Moreover, Sara’s performance is so one-note that she is unable to conjure the horrors — both in terms of body and body language — that her character is faced with.
Gaslight attempts to dial up the intrigue — is what Meesha claiming for real or a red herring? Have the ghosts of her past forced her to hallucinate things? — but has too little meat or meaning to stitch together a story that makes you sit up and take notice. The only bit which arrests attention is that scene of a key character being bludgeoned to death at night, the viewer only managing to see it through the shadows of victim and perpetrator against the backdrop of the salt pan in which it takes place. It’s a striking image that deserved to be in a better film.
And yet you try and remain invested in Gaslight because the rest of the performances, especially from Chitrangda and Vikrant, are engaging enough. But the final twist in the story is so convoluted and unnecessary that it makes you feel that you should have spent those 112 minutes better
