Shaitan

Indian Express Reviews:**1/2

Five young people who only want to have fun are suddenly,in one fell stroke,forced to confront the darkness within. ‘Shaitan’ is a mixed bag of a movie,starting off with a bang,and then petering out,not getting where it sets out to go.

The build-up in this debut is assured,as new kid in town Amy aka Amrita Jaishankar ( Koechlin) is invited into the closed circle of a Mumbai cool-kids gang,comprising a girl who’s forced into being a model by her greedy sister,a geeky Parsi in spectacles,a richie- rich fellow and a nicely-muscled fellow

(Kulhari,Bhoopalam,Devaia). As all gangs do,this one too has rituals,the chief among them being an ability to ‘trust’ one another whatever happens : it could be a leap from a terrace into the blue,or a breathless ride to the wild side.

The director knows what he is doing as he goes about setting the scene: the loose,rapid conversational exchanges amongst kids who spend a lot of time doing nothing,the desire to get high on life with a little bit of help from friends,and other substances which can be rolled and smoked and snorted,the near-fatal insistence on sticking only to the fast lane,and the horrific realization that all the sensation comes at a huge,heart-stopping cost.

The first half of ‘Shaitan’ is a non-stop whirl,which is how it should be in a film like this,giddy with the speed and excitement provided by hand held cameras,and edgy background riffs. But the film goes off track when lives start unraveling : a conflicted cop’s (Khandelwal) attempts at cracking the disappearance of Amy and her gang are interspersed with him trying to deal with a disintegrating marriage,and a corrupt junior (Yadav) and a confused senior

(Malhotra). The switch in tone is disconcerting: where’s all the ‘shaitani’ gone?

These fresh-faced kids are all right,but they are more sketches than filled-out people you want to care about: you never get a sense of a darkness that is waiting to engulf them. Anurag Kashyap,who’s produced ‘Shaitan’,made the unreleased ‘Paanch’ on a similar theme : in that film,you could feel the suffocation and the sense of disintegration as a real,palpable thing. ‘Shaitan’ needed to have been both darker,edgier to have had the same impact.

shubhra.gupta@expressindia.com