Dirty politicians, conspiracies, and revenge. Bhumi Pednekar’s latest release, Durgamati, tries to talk about pertinent issues but suffers through terrible execution. Reminiscent of Bollywood films of the 90s, Durgamati is an out-and-out ham-fest. I wish I could say that it looks promising in the beginning, but you can tell from the very first scene how the story will be treated.

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A horror conspiracy thriller, Durgamati is supposed to be free of specific genres. Just as well, because the movie does not do justice to any. There are far too many predictable jumpscares for it to be any good as a horror, and the conspiracy angle only takes a decent turn towards the end. The dialogue delivery in most scenes is comical. Whether it was Bhumi Pednekar trying to be a blood-thirsty ghost queen or Mahie Gill trying to act out a weird Bengali stereotype, the dialogues and their delivery brought down a number of scenes which could have been powerful.

Several elements of the story needed more attention — the CBI questioning wasn’t even worthy of being called an “interrogation” (a prisoner is free to roam the premises and explore an abandoned palace on her own), the visual effects needed to be more 2020 and less 1995 (gunshot wounds should not look like paintball marks), and the dialogues should not have been written for a Class 4 recitation contest.

What were supposed to be the most powerful scenes of the film were ruined by bad dialogues, bad acting, and some unintentional Manjulika vibes. It was very difficult to take Bhumi Pednekar’s antics as Durgamati seriously.

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The storytelling in Durgamati lacks the ability to keep you hooked to the screen. The film looks almost satirical, even till the end. The story is so relevant to the times and some of the lines will resonate with you, but the execution needed a lot more. The writers too needed to go into more minute details of the story to make this worth watching.

Arshad Warsi, who plays a seemingly minor but ultimately major role, is criminally under-utilised. He can do so much better than his role in Durgamati let him.

Watch this ham-fest if you’re up for some unintended laughs and a few ridiculous attempts at horror this weekend. Here’s the link to watch Durgamati-The Myth.

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