I remember being traumatised after witnessing Ashutosh Rana’s spine-chilling performance as a serial killer and rapist in Dushman (1998). It featured Kajol in a double role, as twin sisters: the boisterous, bob-cut Sonia and the demure Naina. The film balanced pulp and solid well, a riveting thriller with the horror of rape and abuse at its core. Who can forget the terrifying scene in which Rana’s Gokul Pandit shatters an ice slab on Sonia’s head after violating her and stabbing her with a surgical scissor. The chills.

Starring: Kajol, Kriti Sanon, Shaheer Sheikh, Brijendra Kala and Tanvi Azmi

Directed by: Shashanka Chaturvedi

Written by: Kanika Dhillon

Streaming on: Netflix

Probably the only positive outcome of sitting through Do Patti was that it made me revisit the 90s revenge flick. Kajol (just one this time) is stuck with two Kriti Sanons and a volatile Shaheer Sheikh. We also have Tanvi Azmi, in the role of the guardian of twin Kritis (In Dushman she played Sonia and Naina’s mother). After Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba in August, Do Patti is a quick, second serving from the pen of desi Gillian Flynn Kanika Dhillon, who, along with Kriti, turns producer with this one. The plot is a classic Kanika potboiler, which is developing an aesthetic of its own (you can inevitably spot a bridge and a water body). In the fictional hilltown of Devipur, Saumya and Shailee (both played by Kriti) are identical siblings, predictably at odds with each other. The former is the salwar kameez wearing goody two-shoes while the latter is the “evil” one with a penchant for smoking and giving the finger. They fall for the same guy, the bad boy Dhruv Sood (Shaheer in a competent film debut) whose love language is paragliding. After dallying with Shailee, he finally decides to settle for the “homely” Saumya. But Dhruv has daddy issues, and no later Saumya is dabbing her bruises. Parallelly, Kajol plays the headstrong cop Vidya Jyothi who soon gets embroiled in their affairs. After a paragliding accident, Dhruv is accused of attempt to murder by the otherwise subservient Saumya. Did he do it, did he not?

Unlike Kanika’s previous works, there is no actual killing or body disposal which kind of dampens the thrills. The stakes are not high and you can anticipate the twists from miles away. The film is kitsch bordering on cringe and every character is cut out from a cliché. In a scene, Kajol’s Vidya uses her phone’s voice recorder as a diary which reminded me of—pardon my comparison—FBI agent Dale Cooper’s amusing soliloquies into his recorder in David Lynch’s haunting and absurdist TV show Twin Peaks (1990). But Vidya’s action is more of a quip, something the writer picked up on and embellished into her character for mere dressing. I also had trouble placing Kajol’s accent as Vidya. It felt like an impersonation of a Hindi film cop whose jurisdiction is the whole of North India.

This is the first time Kriti is dabbling with a double role. She is more at ease as the timid Saumya than the outgoing Shailee. As the latter twin, her reference point seems to be Deepika Padukone in Cocktail (2012). After getting her heart broken by Dhruv, she downs Vodka straight from the bottle, shakes her frizzy hair and tries to dissolve in the sad beats of ‘Raanjhan’. It’s melodramatic, like a K-serial. Kajol too plays the cop like a stock character. It’s not just the performances, the material itself is paper thin and the mystery never really unravels. Everything becomes tiring too fast, too soon.

Do Patti is a mediocre thriller which also takes up the onus of depicting the social evil of domestic violence. It ends up becoming a Darlings (2022) for dummies. Shaheer’s Dhruv is an easily angered man whose father is a misogynist prick who utters the sister swear enough times to convince you the family hails from Delhi. The effects of patriarchy and the circle of silence are portrayed so plainly, it’s laughable. After Dhruv is scheduled to stand for trial for trying to kill Saumya, his politician father makes a call, enquiring about the judge. “Justice Aruna Goel,” he is informed. “Aurat, b*******” he mutters.

Penned by a woman writer and with two women (Kriti and Kanika) backing the project, I expected Do Patti to bring a fresh, more nuanced flavour to the female-led thriller. Rather, it falls in the predictable trappings of a sub-par pulp novel. It made me yearn for a simpler time when thrillers made you chew your nails in anticipation, when the joys of a murder mystery were about how in an idle moment everything falls in place for the detective. When Kajol was not a cop but the killer.