Adhura Series Review: A heavy drama that fails on being spooky

The backdrop of Adhura is Nilgiris Valley School in Tamil Nadu. Located at a quaint and secluded area, where bizarrely everyone speaks Hindi and nothing but that language, what only gets more unusual is when eerie circumstances begin to rise, say when puppies are supposedly murdered by a 10-year-old boy. The series only gets lazier with the several threads that Adhura chooses to go ahead with, especially when they can be long predicted before, while also drawing several parallels to 2003 Tamil slasher/horror film Whistle.

Directed by: Gauravv K Chawla, Ananya Banerjee

Starring: Rasika Dugal, Ishwak Singh, Shrenik Arora, Poojan Chabra, Rahul Dev, among others

Streaming on: Prime Video

The heart of Adhura lies within several characters, and is one of the few things that work in favour of the series, which tries to evenly distribute the weight of the horror. If there is Vedant (also known as puppy murderer), a schoolboy from the 2022 batch who bears the brunt of being bullied, there is a tormented Adhiraj from the 2007 batch, who visits the school for a reunion and hoping for a closure with his best friend Ninad. There is also student counsellor Supriya who has a personal conflict entangled on so many levels that she begins to empathise with Vedant and takes him under her wings, and Malvika, ex-flame of Adhiraj and now the “trophy wife” of Dev, another student from the 2007 batch and son of school trustee member. Not to forget, there is definitely a ghost that lurks in between these batches, and it becomes evidently clear within the first few episodes as to why it chooses Vedant as its host body. The makers leave no surprise in the engagement these characters have with each other, as they represent or rather seemingly fit into the boxes that each one is designed for.

For a genre like horror, especially in India, where set templates provide the framework for the course of happenings, the makers of Adhura try to infuse some pertinent topics like importance of queer allyship, childhood bullying, and addressal of mental illness. But on a broader note, these heavier topics that come with much larger responsibilities do not get their deserved portions of explanations and justifications. We do get some nugget pieces of information like how Ninad develops a superhero imagery called the Shadow Boy, a character that fights back against the bullies in dark, and the internal trauma of Supriya that instigates to sympathise with the vilified Vedant. There are throwaway lines of postpartum depression, and homophobia, but that doesn’t justify bringing these topics into discussion or having callbacks in otherwise humanising pieces of narratives. Having said that, Adhura does not tap into the potentials of the genre, and let alone the scariness, even the basic adrenaline rush is absent. Despite having multiple layers added to the characters, and incorporating a rational thought that humans are made of both good and bad elements, none of the characters linger in the afterthoughts of the show. There is no real impact caused by the friendship of Ninad and Adhiraj, or why Malvika feels like a third-wheel in their ocean of affection. Perhaps, explore it more; given it is a series that runs for a considerable amount of time? There is no rooting of characters or a perspective that is enough to take you along the story. Thoughts induced by dialogues are left for interpretations but the payoffs are not well defined.

Adhura tries to borrow elements from hit horror show The Haunting of the Hill House, and references of The Crooked Man, but do we certainly need them for their half-baked utilisation? Instead, had only the makers come up with certain home-grown concepts of horror, it would have made the show an interesting watch. There are creaky doors, and secluded hallways, that one might caution the protagonist not to enter. But the makers go past this precariously only under the wrong assumption that it borrows the chills of the Nilgiris Mountains. While the cast puts up a clean show, and there are decent intercuts between the past and the present that neatly interweaves the parallel tracks unfolding, there just isn't enough horror to make it an intriguing watch. Much predictability galore and when horror turns into investigation crime drama, the interest level drops deeply.

There is a dismal ending that rather leaves you to ponder on strangely. Given viewers are accustomed to a “twist” in the endings of horror shows, is that a lead up to the second season with altogether a different premise, or the ghosts of the old lives resurface again? Only the makers can show that light, but for now, we are left in gloom and a sense of...well... adhura..?