‘Maa’ – Tepid fright flick that fails to scare

A Bollywood icon and special effects don’t really give this film the oomph it required…

HORROR is a growing genre in Bollywood and this was widely anticipated because it has a star name to it – Kajol.

Anyone familiar with Bollywood will know who she is and be acutely aware that she does not do too many films these days.

So, it is thrilling (for many) to see her name light up the billboards.

Perhaps, it is her equally famous and more active acting husband – Ajay Devgn and his production company has coaxed her out of the shadows…

Directed by Vishal Furia, this must have sounded good on paper and with a reasonable budget for special effects, something of an easy banker, shall we say.

Suffice to say, it is on the whole, disappointing and never really gets beyond first gear – it isn’t scary and the story doesn’t pull you in enough to be really concerned about what happens to anyone.

Shuvanker (Indraneil Sengupta), Ambika (Kajol) and daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma) are living quite happily in the big city – present day Kolkata but before we see them, we start somewhere in 1985 (though it looks like the century before that even) in a rural place called Chandrapur – and a grand house presided over by a patriarchal father (Dibeyendu Bhattarcharya) – whose wife has given birth to twins.

A son – Shuvanker emerges first, then a daughter. Such is suspicion and tradition, that she has to be sacrificed – or so you think…

This part of the story becomes clearer later – but essentially girl babies are not much valued and are barely tolerated in what is Shuvanker’s home village.

He has built a comfortable life for himself away from all that and despite the protestations of his daughter to visit their ancestral home – Shuvanker and Ambika will hear nothing of it.

What leads him back is his father’s sudden demise and he is forced to return.

Of course, the demons come for him perhaps a little predictably…

His death forces Ambika and Shweta to go to Chandrapur in rural West Bengal, for the last rites.

There are a few strange figures here but Shweta makes friends with a girl of about the same age whose parents look after the house and the elderly father of the male housekeeper is afflicted by mental decline and who breaks his long silence on seeing Shweta and is convinced death is around the corner.

The strange figures are possessed and we see lots of young wild feral girls begin an assault on Ambika and Shweta as they try to leave Chandrapur quickly in their car. They survive this time but know things are worsening and they aren’t allowed to leave the village and will have to stick it out a little longer.

This part of the movie is watchable and we get the impression that things may be building in terms of how scary the film will become…

But no, we get a central demonic figure which is almost identical to the White Walkers of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame and the film loses any interest it might have aroused until that point.

There is a police investigation led by a rationalist cop, who struggles to believe what the villagers are telling him and we, as the audience, are engaged in considering how ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ things maybe and this is complicated by the idea that when the Goddess Kali reveals herself in a dream to anyone in Chandrapur, expect things to happen and rituals and demons must be exorcised.

With some finesse and a tighter script, which relied more on visual storytelling and not character explanation – this might have worked but as it is, our interest has already waned and this critic wanted it all to wrap quickly.

At nearly two hours and fifteen minutes, the whole film drags, isn’t scary or absorbing enough – there are promising elements and some scenes with more fright could have lifted this film considerably.

ACV rating: ** (out of five)

‘Maa’ is in cinemas worldwide now (released on June 27 2025)