Toxic teaser: Amid the Vanga-fication of the landscape, will the real Geetu Mohandas stand up?

This reaction confirms, with sharp clarity, the purpose of the two-minute fifty-second teaser: a relentless reiteration of the fully realized Vanga-fication of the landscape. We see Yash, as Raya, arriving in a vintage car at a graveyard. In a startling fusion of passion and violence: a car-bound encounter erupts as it thrusts against a bomb trigger, igniting an explosive climax that tears through the graveyard and annihilates his enemies. Emerging from smoke, with a gun in hand, he declares, “Daddy’s home.” Clearly, Vanga will be enthralled, this is precisely the kind of crude, chauvinistic imagery that captivates him.

Will the real Geetu Mohandas stand up?

Excitement soared to the rooftops when it was announced that Geetu Mohandas, the filmmaker who has assuredly, crafted seminal works like Moothon and Liar’s Dice, both suffused with a sensitive, empathetic gaze, would take on Toxic. Specifically, in a film like Moothon, where she subverted an entire genre steeped in excessive masculinity, on its very head, infusing it with a spine. With Toxic, expectations are similarly elevated, as after Yash wielded both his stardom and his menace in the blockbuster violence of Prashant Neel’s KGF franchise, Mohandas was poised to interrogate a different, perhaps hidden, dimension of his persona. Yet, judging by the teaser, the female gaze that has defined her distinctive voice appears surprisingly absent.

Toxic A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups teaser introduced Yash’s character Raya in action-packed teaser.

Indeed, evaluating a film solely from a two-minute fifty-second teaser is perilous. Such units are often deliberately designed to tease, elude, and confound viewers. More so in this case, as the Toxic teaser has been launched on the birthday of its leading star, rightly elevating its male protagonist to an almost mythic pedestal. Yet the larger question persists: why this endless fixation on asserting male power through the subjugation of another gender? Cinema offers boundless avenues for inventiveness, yet here it is distilled into a set piece which features a woman who is violently choked in an intimate moment, only to be intercut with the hero annihilating every conceivable adversary. Is this a conception of power so impoverished it can only be expressed through domination, or is it simply insecurity masquerading as bravura? Evidently, this is the logic of the male gaze as codified by Vanga’s cinema, a realm in which force is lionized and nuance is all but effaced.

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Taking on Dhurandhar 2 Face to Face

The teaser proudly proclaims that Toxic is poised for a direct clash with Dhar’s Dhurandhar 2, which in itself, is another iteration of troubling identity politics. If Dhar’s sequel promises yet more gory spectacle, the makers of Toxic have clearly positioned themselves several steps ahead, combining violence with unabashedly raunchy undertones. After all, what could be a more potent concoction for the first-day, first-show audience of charged up males than this twin reinforcement. In this sense, it is evident that this Eid, the contest between Dhurandhar 2 and Toxic is not simply a battle for box-office supremacy; it is a contest over who can inflame, and rage-bait more effectively.