Dahaad series review: Tight thriller with too many points to make

Last year, Denmark-based Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi came up with Holy Spider, a film which turned a critical lens towards society in the Middle East while masquerading as a serial killer thriller. Abbasi’s subject was the real-life murderer Saeed Hanaei (Saeed Azimi in the film) who preyed on prostitutes and killed 16 women between 2000 and 2001 in Iran’s holy city of Mashhad. While the film, stripped to its bones, is a chase between a scribe and a killer, its subtext swims in the statements made by some religious hardliners, lauding Hanaei for “cleansing Iran of moral corruption.”

Created by: Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar

Directed by: Reema Kagti and Ruchika Oberoi

Starring: Sonakshi Sinha, Vijay Varma, Gulshan Devaiah, Sohum Shah

Although the antagonist Anand Swarnakar (Vijay Varma) of Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar’s Dahaad gets no such support, at least not openly, both him and Abbasi’s character are made out of the same wood. Men, who are both perpetrators and victims of patriarchy, slaughtering women who are seeking an escape from traditionalist systems. The worlds of both films mirror each other in their apathy towards the fairer sex. Dahaad, just like Holy Spider, balances the page-turning thrill of a pulp novel with a larger commentary on societal evils. Till, just like Holy Spider, it is unable to.

The eight-part series is based in Mandawa, a small, dusty town in Rajasthan. An investigation into a ‘Love Jihad’ case branches out into a bigger conspiracy. Over the years, 27 women from underprivileged caste households were found dead in public toilets. What was initially brushed off as stray suicides portray a pattern now: A mysterious lover, girls escaping their houses, all of them consuming cyanide the night after sexual intercourse. A serial killer is on the loose. On his tracks is SI Anjali Bhati (Sonakshi Sinha in her OTT debut), a bullet-riding, underprivileged caste cop who unwinds by smacking down men in Judo classes. A subordinate burns incense sticks whenever Bhati passes by him. The whiff of caste discrimination looms over the series, sometimes to an unsubtle extent. Bhati is barred from entering certain havelis, her ‘concerned’ mother pays off a priest to get her a better suitor. The details seem fresh in the beginning but are overplayed and feel like double-highlighting an already established point.

The mouse (or snake as his shirt patterns hint at) in this cat-and-mouse is Varma’s Anand, a married man with a child, who works as a Hindi professor at a girls’ college and runs a mobile library for kids on the weekends. Although men with vans shouldn’t be trusted, on the surface Anand seems an innocuous samaritan. He envies his well-off brother, his patriarchal father belittles him and his wife is cheating on him. The character is a trove of serial killer tropes but Varma plays him with an uneasy stillness. Having essayed the roles of misogynist fiends back-to-back in Darlings and She, Varma still manages to bring something--even if slightly—different to the table. A sweet revelation is Gulshan Devaiah as Bhati’s senior Devi Lal Singh. A feminist ally, Singh empowers his daughter and reprimands his wife for being ‘backward’ in the process. Singh is a morally upright man who is not immune to desire and Devaiah plays him deftly, exhibiting all his dilemmas.

When it comes to the nuts and bolts of a nail-biting thriller, Dahaad is tight. The beats land perfectly in the beginning but towards the crescendo, the series starts breaking off. The final act seems too long drawn, the social commentary is being spelt out and the narrative loses momentum. Patriarchy, women empowerment, anti-natalism, caste discrimination, Dahaad screams into too many voids. In the process, it loses its voice.