CAST: Vijay Varma, Shefali Shah, Alia Bhatt, Roshan Mathew, Rajesh Sharma,Vijay Maurya,Kiran Karmakar,Puja Sarup,Santosh Juvekar

DIRECTED BY: Jasmeet K. Reen

The movie summary on Netflix categorized Darlings as a dark comedy thriller. However in the 2 hour 14 minutes of the runtime of this movie, the domestic violence was so stark that you quite don’t catch the “dark comedy” of any situation, despite some funny one liners.

Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings had personally traveled to court Shah Rukh Khan, getting his banner Red Chillies to produce films and series for its platform. Bela Bajaria, the VP of Netflix heading India ops, is an American Indian quite friendly with the Karan Johar circuit, as he also throws birthday bashes for her, so no wonder Netflix gets all the Johar camp business. It would be obvious that Alia Bhatt’s maiden production co-produced by her Eternal Sunshine and Shahrukh Khan’s Red Chillies choose Netflix as their streaming platform.

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Red Chillies hasn’t produced an original for Netflix since 2020 (Bard of Blood, Class of ’83) so no doubt Netflix is praying that this collaboration pulls the numbers for them.

In Darlings, a young woman Badru (Bhatt) stuck in an abusive marriage seeks revenge for the years of violence inflicted on her by her alcoholic husband (Vijay Varma). 

Badru marries her boyfriend Hamza and plans a lovely life filled with kids. Her plans fail when Hamza, who is a TC with Indian Railways turns out to be an alcoholic who gets violent with his wife over trivial issues and assaults her every night. The worst is that after every abuse , he manipulates Badru’s emotions and spins facts to suit himself to win her back till the next time.

While her mother Shamshunissa “Shamshu” Ansari (Shefali Shah) tries to be the voice of reason for Badru, it takes a lot more than just battering for Badru to realize that Hamza cannot change his hard-wired disposition.

Shamsu tells Badru the story of a Tortoise and a Scorpion, who bites the Tortoise even after the Tortoise saves it’s life, Badru does not think it applies to her situation. And then because of a traumatic experience ( not giving away the spoiler) , she realizes that it is not alcohol that makes Hamza violent, it is his inherent temperament.

In its 134 minutes on screen, half of the movie is stretched to tell its audiences how badly behaved Hamza , the husband is and like most abused wives, Badru, keeps hoping that she can change him.

However, the movie does not gain momentum at all. It was very hard to watch the abuse scenes and it was harder to see the foolish girl in love , hoping against hope that her husband changes for good after every beating she received, despite her mother telling her that the man will not change.

When finally the penny drops for Badru, she contemplates how to fix her husband. Her mother says that she should just kill him. When Shamshu gets a call from the police a minute later, the mother-daughter panic, thinking the police somehow overheard them. 

The script did not want to take the risk to show a woman protagonist be angrier. Infact, the scenes where Badru finally breaks down and decides enough is enough are rushed and plastic, compared to half the screen time spent in establishing Badru as a sentimental fool. Her new avatar, therefore, seems shallow.

Her new vengeful avatar lacks trauma aftermath- making her very unrelatable to domestic violence victims.

The movie did not pull through a dark flavor or comedy. The specific way of talking in english language plurals was really not funny. The movie was watchable because of the brilliant cast that embellished the characters. Vijay Verma as Hamza is so sharp that you feel his tenacity. Shefali Shah is brilliant in her portrayal as Shamsu and Roshan Mathew is such an endearing pick for the character of Zulfi.

What was disappointing was Alia Bhatt. After a blockbuster performance in Gangubhai, we were expecting a lot more from her as Badru but the only scenes she delivered perfectly in were the trauma sequences.

On the whole, we were disappointed by the faux dark comedy and a badly executed thriller.