Some films are bad. Some are terrible. And some are pure torture. The Vvaan falls neatly into that third category, in which I struggled to find a single redeeming feature, and failed spectacularly.

When we first come upon a Mumbai-based engineer (Sidharth Malhotra) and his wife (Tamannaah Bhatia), childless but certainly not loveless, they are a) singing songs in a large sea-side bungalow, b) fetching up at a quack who hands out potency powders and c) participating in a hideous racist-colourist joke.

The Vvaan never recovers from this early blow. Nor did I, as the film kept drawing me deeper into an off-colour, off-putting mix of so-called fantasy and folklore, of the kind that involves dark forests and their resident guardian devis, and evil spirits which devour those who dare walk into their domain after dark.

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Said engineer and wife arrive in a village in which live his elder brother (Anup Soni) and perpetually-annoyed wife (Shweta Tiwari) to sort out some property matters, said property being inside the haunted forest.

An ambitious local (Sunil Grover) has some ideas about said jungle, and anyone with half-a-brain can see that a land-grab is underway. That leads, for reasons no can fathom, to an item number, giving Sidharth-and-Tamannah a chance to swing it.

Rationalist engineer pooh-poohs all reeti-rivaaj and puraani-pratha, with his family hoping he will come to his senses soon. But that would mean no film, right? So out come wispy CGI monsters, horned bulls with divine power, and devis with, well, devi shakti. Much footage is spent on pretty puja thaalis, and ladies in red adorned with elaborate teekas which don’t budge while submerged in rivers, and staged fights between hero and villain, helped by humans and benign supernatural beings.

An alleged comedy strand features the hero’s pal (Maniesh Paul), stalking a random elderly lady (Sulabha Arya) doing random crazy things. Clearly, Bollywood’s idea of broad comedy hasn’t moved an inch in all these decades.

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When not rescuing Tamannaah from a watery grave, Sidharth is climbing snowy mountains and shouldering holy relics down the slope, very Prabhas-like. Meanwhile, all ideas of a coherent plot and even the faintest bit of sense, leave the chat.

Somewhere in all this, a character says, ‘meri madad kar’, plucking the thought right from my numbed brain.

The Vvaan movie cast: Sidharth Malhotra, Tamannaah Bhatia, Anup Soni, Sunil Grover, Shweta Tiwari, Maniesh Paul, Sulabha Arya


The Vvaan movie director: Deepak Kumar Mishra


The Vvaan movie rating: 0.5 star