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Bulbbul Review : There's more to Bulbbul than meets the eye

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Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Shivani Dubey 2 163 days ago

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User RAGHU 110 637 days ago

Tripti is Shines on This Thriller.

Girish Patel 1368 days ago

A very weird movie, hard to follow the plot and a confusing ending. Don't waste your time on this one.

Member 1410 days ago

Nice movie and has a great storyline... I like it....

Vivand Biz 14332 1418 days ago

A badly made and badly pictured semi horror film with no realism, poor acting and one of the worst set productions I have seen in a long time. How netflix could host such a poorly made production (of Anushka who obviously has no taste) is a mystery..

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Bulbbul Reviews

An anti-fairytale at its very core, this feminist fable is arguably the most gorgeous looking thing to have come out of Hindi cinema all year.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 14, 2021

This densely layered and visually stunning Bollywood import plays a little like the classic Japanese horror film Audition.

Full Review | Aug 16, 2020

Bulbbul reflects upon this thought as it condemns the culture of silence that women are subjected to. It reminds you what you are truly capable of, once you decide to avenge injustice and seek redemption.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 29, 2020

The best any critical Western viewer might offer in praise is "Nice try."

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 23, 2020

1 of the questions the film throws up&doesn't answer is if the binary between being a devi or chudail is the only recourse feminine power has to navigate in this patriarchal set up. No easy answers in sight but nevertheless a visually appealing film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 10, 2020

Whilst Bulbbul doesn't fulfil the potential we've seen out of the country's genre film scene, it's still a lush and disturbing hybrid of folk-horror and fairytale.

Full Review | Jul 10, 2020

Bulbbul isn't the sort of spine-chilling film that will spook you out of your mind but it is engaging enough not to ever let you off the hook.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 8, 2020

Though Dutt erases the misogynistic and patriarchal overtones of [the] chudail [folklore for] a feminist spin, ... she doesn't add to it in any meaningful manner.

Full Review | Jul 3, 2020

That Bulbbul still manages to make for a hypnotic experience is a quiet triumph, a testament to Dutt's distinct storytelling and efficient casting.

Full Review | Jun 30, 2020

Thinly written but meticulously shot, producer Anushka Sharma's follow-up to the brilliant Paatal Lok is a bit of a letdown.

Overall, it's a fantastic debut for Anvita Dutt. Bulbbul feels like it's been directed by an experienced hand and not a newbie.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jun 30, 2020

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 30, 2020

For a narrative inspired by director Anvita Dutt's affection for words, perhaps it's both ironic and fitting that Bulbbul wears the distinct visual aura of a dreamer...

Suspenseful, visually arresting, and chock-full of charismatic performances, Bulbbul is an incredibly impressive debut from director Anvita Dutt and a must-see for your next movie night.

Bulbbul is fashioned as a sharply relevant fable. It is a powerfully feminist, revisionist tale of a woman wronged, and it is told with economy, precision, style and feeling.

Dimri is a stunner who speaks volumes with her eyes. And the audience can do little but stay enraptured.

There appears to be a layer or two missing in the screenplay, but whatever is on the screen for 94 minutes is smart, sensitive and haunting.

Produced by Anushka Sharma, this supernatural thriller has the right spirit and soul...

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Bulbbul – Netflix Movie Review (4/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Jun 24, 2020 | 3 minutes

BULBBUL is a Netflix horror movie from India. With a runtime of just 94 minutes, it’s worth your time and offers high production value. This is a dark fairytale with important messages and a stunning visual style. Read our full Bulbbul review here and check it out on Netflix now!

BULBBUL is a new Netflix horror movie. Or actually, it’s more of a dark fairytale that has lots of gorgeous colors and morals. However, it does also become very brutal and violent at times (including rape). The movie is from India and was both written and directed by a woman, which is obvious in several important ways.

And yes, I do mean this in a very positive way!

Also, while movies from India tend to have a lot of dialogue in English, Bulbbul does not. The story begins in 1888 and ends 20 years later, so we’re not in modern India. If you’ve watched any Netflix productions from India, you’ll know that the production quality is very impressive. This is definitely also the case for this one.

Continue reading our Bulbbul review below.

A classic horror movie from India

We’ve watched quite a few horror movies from India in recent years. We absolutely loved Tumbbad (2018) which you should definitely check out if you like Bulbbul . It’s (also) like a crazy dark fairytale that you find yourself getting totally immersed with. Also, Tumbbad has an IMDb rating of 8.3 which is well-deserved! Just sayin’.

Recommended reading: Our review of the Hindi fantasy-horror movie Tumbbad here >

Most recently, we’ve watched Netflix horror series from India. Just this past month (May 2020), Netflix released Betaal , which you should certainly also check out on. Plus, if you like it even darker (and with a cool female leading character), the Netflix mini-series Ghoul is also one I’d recommend. You can check out our review of Ghoul here >

Obviously, Bulbbul is a movie (like Tumbbad ), which does mean it differs quite a bit from both Betaal and Ghoul . However, what it does not do is go the way of Bollywood music videos. That happened several times during The Body on Netflix which was the remake of a Spanish thriller.

The musical Bollywood elements simply do not work for international audiences, so I’m glad they stayed away from that with Bulbbul . While this new movie does have the vibrant colors of classic Bollywood productions, the story is much darker and is definitely a comment on issues that still plague the country to this day.

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Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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‘Bulbbul’ Movie Review: A Powerful Tale About The All-Pervasiveness Of Male Violence

Entertainment Editor

When a young Bulbbul, who’s about to be wedded to a much, much older man, asks her aunt the purpose of a toe-ring, she says that the toe contains a nerve that needs to be contained, or the ‘girl can fly off’. “Like a bird!” the little girl speculates.

In Anvita Dutt’s spooky film, this is a symbol and a comment on the first stage of oppression within the broader construct of marriage. The scene makes it clear what this film is about: controlling women who’re determined to question and, well, fly.

Just not in the cute way that it sounds.

For all their apparent lightness, fairy tales are often dark, morbid tales and Bulbbul fits into this mold. Set in early twentieth century Bengal, Bulbbul unspools, for most part, within the confines of a mansion that looks sprawling from the outside but whose insides are endangered by the moral decay of its inhabitants. Indranil and his mentally stunted twin Mahendra (Rahul Bose in a double role) are married to Bulbbul and Binodini but Bulbbul’s feelings for their younger brother, Satya, who she grew up around, haven’t dimmed. The character names and the interpersonal dynamics are, most certainly, a nod to Tagore’s Chokher Bali while the mansion in itself seems to be reminiscent of Guru Dutt’s Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam (which in turn was an adaptation of Bimal Mitra’s novel by the same name)

The narrative goes into flashback to introduce the complications of this love quadrangle (yep). In the present, Mahendra is dead and Indranil has abandoned the mansion. The two women, free from their partners, live by themselves in a village gripped by a series of murders, believed to be committed by a ‘witch.’ Satya, who was packed off to London, returns to the village, determined to debunk the rumour. A person of science, he says it’s a “human” who’s behind the killings, most likely a man. “Why can’t it be a woman?” Bulbbul, who’s grown out of her youthful adoration for him, retorts.

ALSO READ: Juhi Chaturvedi, Writer Of ‘Gulabo Sitabo’, ‘October’, ‘Piku’ On How Her Reality Shaped The Movies

The most striking quality about Bulbbul is Siddharth Dewan’s cinematography and Meenal Agarwal’s imposing production design, both blending seamlessly to create a world that seems to rest at the intersection of reality and fantasy. The film’s high-contrast colour palette signals its stylistic ambition, sucking you into its strange reality where everything ― the doors, the passageways, the chandeliers, even the vermilion ― appear ominous, their eeriness heightened by Amit Trivedi’s background score that reverberates like an adult lullaby, a melancholic cry of death, desperation and despair.

It’s as if Dutt is giving us a very specific yet universally-imagined visual recreation of grandmother tales where everything was hyper-dramatised for effect. Bulbbul mirrors that idea, ticking off everything from spooky mansion to creepy husbands to absent villagers. The mansion is a universe in itself and will collapse under the weight of its own incestuous secrets. It’s also the place where the princess is metaphorically imprisoned, its imposing walls and sturdy bars literally making it resemble a festering penitentiary. Unlike in fairy-tales and more like in real life, there are no guardians here. It’d have been a travesty if the stand-in for the audience ― Satya ― would’ve turned into a male savior, which would reinforce the problematic status quo: that men will violate women and then rescue them too. Dutt carefully avoids this trap.

The women in this film don’t need one either. Their bondage is inflicted by men but emancipation is entirely driven by self. Which brings us to the film’s big idea: abuse. Dutt’s screenplay may take place in a fantastical space but it captures the all-pervasive, relentless cycle of abuse that’s as present now as it was before.

The film features graphic scenes of prolonged abuse but this serves a very specific purpose: by foregrounding female pain, Dutt compels us to confront the horrors of that lived experience, instead of cutting away from it to something more comforting. She isn’t using violence as a trope or a cheap device to advance a horror story but as something that’s at the very core of her storytelling.

The film’s ‘big twist’ is yes, predictable and it’s unclear if the makers were aware of this. In one scene, the ‘reveal’ is even spelt out but Satya — played by Avinash Tiwary — still doesn’t seem to catch on, in what feels disingenuous. It sucks when the audience is ahead of the characters, where one cracks a mystery much before those who’re expected to.

But Bulbbul’s scenes are constructed with precision and lyrical beauty, it’s almost as if Sanjay Leela Bhansali went on a self-imposed exile, discovered his freak and returned as a goth kid: realising that his cinematic soul is closer to del Toro than to Baz Luhrmann.

The film’s ultimate payoff isn’t about the ‘who’ as much as it is about how the film reaches there. Which it does with efficiency and style, the discomfort compounding with every scene. It’s led by a competent cast, on top of which is Tripti Dimri. Hiding her wounds behind a wholesome smile, Dimri captures her character’s brokenness and the steely spirit she’s derived from it. Nothing breaks you more than the betrayal of adolescent romance. And yet, the film argues, the tendency of men to control and repress and eventually abandon, emotionally or physically, only grows with time.

Rahul Bose is perfect. Nothing conveys emotional neglect and entitled manhood better than Bose’s uptight demeanor. Having played a variation of this character — barring the abuse of course — in Dil Dhadakne Do , he’s terrific as a gentle monster, someone who lets out very little about what he’s thinking even when he’s thinking and scheming a lot more.

Avinash Tiwary, last seen in Ghost Stories , is in command of his role here, capturing his bafflement and intrigue and determination in equal measure. Paoli Dam, who’s always been an exceptional actor, deserved a better arc and a clearer backstory, but she excels quietly, fanning the flames of jealousy in soap-operatic fashion.

Which sums up Bulbbul : it’s a hyper stylistic soap opera that borrows from folklore and, rips apart the misogyny of ‘chuddail’ and ultimately turns into a revenge fest, entertaining the kind of questionable justice that’s so far from being attained in reality that it can exist only in fantasies.

While the end of the film doesn’t satisfy or justify the built-up, it’s commendable that Anushka Sharma — producer of Bulbbul is consistently pushing boundaries.

Her past productions — NH 10 , Phillauri , Pari , Paatal Lok and now, Bulbbul , can all be tied together as nearly all of them explore and embrace adventurous storytelling and carry within them, a feminist spirit. She also continues to introduce and platform a new breed of filmmakers — Anvita Dutt being the latest visionary — who are ambitious and, like Bulbbul herself, not bound by toe rings meant to control their freedoms.

Bulbbul review | A fiercely feminist tale with characters from classic myths

Cast: Tripti Dimri, Rahul Bose, Avinash Tiwary, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Paoli Dam

Direction: Anvita Dutt

Rating: ***1/2

Bulbbul, written and directed by Anvita Dutt, is set in 1881 Bengal Presidency, but it could be set anywhere, anytime. Its theme is ubiquitous and its story has that particularly feminine, itinerant spirit which finds a home everywhere.

Bulbbul, a tale that sits daintily in the real world but dangles its feet in the universe of fairies and fables, is about how the world order is pivoted on male desire, and how this world reacts, with rage and revenge, when it encounters female desire.

It’s a ghastly, plausible account that takes flight into the fantasy world, its insurgent spirit not seeking an escape, but to subvert the narrative that men and patriarchy have created, and claim it as her own.

Little Bulbbul is getting married, seemingly to Chote Thakur Satya, but she is actually to be the wife of Bade Thakur Indraneel (Rahul Bose), who lives in a majestic haveli with his twin brother, Mahendra, who is not all there. There’s also Mahendra’s wife, Binodini (Paoli Dam).

Bulbbul is tiny, but she’s no pushover. She reacts to male entitlement that, even in its nascent stage, is casually offensive.

She arrives at the haveli with a husband, but is more interested in spending time with her friend Satya who, to distract her from her sadness at having to leave her house, told her the story of a chudail.

But the haveli is a dark place where only male desire must be pandered to.

As Bulbbul grows into Badi Bahu with a husband who dotes on her, the only other woman in the house looks on with yearning and malevolence. Bulbbul’s friendship with Chote Thakur blossoms, the two of them growing up creating stories together. And in this Binodini Didi sees an opportunity.

A calculated but casual remark about another plants the seed of doubt, and soon the frail male ego goes limp.

Satya is sent off to England and before Bade Thakur packs his own bags, he leaves Bulbbul with scars that won’t ever heal.

Several years later Satya Thakur (Avinash Tiwary) returns from England to find the house empty of most of its inhabitants.

He brings back Binodini Didi, who is now a widow, and being the only man, he appoints himself as Bulbbul’s moral guard. He especially doesn't like her spending time with Dr Sudeep (Parambrata Chattopadhyay).

In the village, meanwhile, there are murmurs and a police investigation — about murders and a chudail.

The story of witches is the story of women — celebrated and worshiped when they conform, and demonised, vilified, hunted for having desires, for wanting, for yearning, for seeking the freedom to choose.

Anvita Dutt's Bulbbul is produced by Anushka Sharma and is a fiercely feminist tale. It takes characters and tropes from classic myths and folk tales to gnaw at patriarchy. It smiles and hums when it draws blood.

Bulbbul’s story and story-telling are both shrouded in mist and mystery. It finds power in stuff left unsaid.

For a long time we are clueless, happy to be seduced by the haunting humming of a girl and gorgeous Bulbbul lolling about in the imposing haveli.

Bulbbul is shot and edited beautifully, as if each scene is a piece of art, a painting. There’s a heady craziness to its camera work. Much like a chudail, it swoops up, comes up close and flies away at whim.

Many of its scenes are bathed in a single tone — red, pink, yellow -- giving the film an otherworldly texture, an eerie tinge, as if the mood of the witch at the moment has coloured everything she sees.

Rahul Bose doesn’t have much dialogue, yet he plays both Indraneel and Mahendra with different shades of madness. He is very, very good. Powerful. Saying more would be revealing, except that in one particularly violent scene he gave me the chills.

Avinash Tiwary has a lanky body and a big face, and in both he carries the mood and timbre of yore.

Tripti Dimri’s Bulbbul is different from her Badi Bahu.

Her Bulbbul embraces life, says things she is not expected to. But Badi Bahu doesn’t say much. She just smiles mysteriously, till we eventually figure out why.

As the keeper of the haveli’s many secrets, her Bulbbul does what Binodini Didi said repeatedly — “Chup rehna”, only to eventually let out a yelp that’s devastating in its rage and sadness.

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Bulbbul movie review: Anushka Sharma's continuing interest in the paranormal yields compelling results

Bulbbul combines what appear to be Anushka Sharma’s two primary interests – feminism and the paranormal.

Language: Hindi

I really enjoy the way Anushka Sharma’s mind works.

I am not referring to this film alone for which of course writer-director Anvita Dutt must first be cited. The mention of Sharma right at the start of this review comes because of a pattern emerging from the choices this talented actor has made in her avatar as a producer in the past half decade. Her debut production, NH10 in 2015, was a feminist crime thriller. Then followed two supernatural flicks, one a romance ( Phillauri , 2017), the other a horror movie ( Pari , 2018). Just as she is reaping accolades and fending off outraged conservatives for her socio-political crime series Paatal Lok on Amazon Prime, here comes her first feature film to be released directly on a streaming platform.

Bulbbul combines what appear to be Sharma’s two primary interests – feminism and the paranormal – that earlier came together in the terrifying Pari . Her courageous, non-conformist filmography as a producer is at odds with her off-screen image in recent years of being a supporter of the current right-wing regime.

In Bulbbul , the viewer is transported to the Bengal Presidency in 1881, where child marriages were a norm, and women born or married into aristocratic families were expected – no differently from today – to stay silent about the injustices meted out to them by patriarchy, their caste privilege notwithstanding.

A sense of foreboding descends on the screen from the very first frame on the wedding day of a little girl (Ruchi Mahajan), and in the palanquin on the way to her marital home, as a kind older boy tells her the story of a murderous, bloodthirsty chudail (female demon).

Twenty years later, the girl is now a gorgeous but oddly detached young woman (Tripti Dimri) presiding over her mansion while her husband (Rahul Bose) and his twin brother are nowhere to be seen, her elder sister-in-law (Paoli Dam) has been relegated to insignificance and her attractive brother-in-law (Avinash Tiwary) returns after a long absence.

Director Amar Kaushik had blended humour and the other-world in his Stree in 2018 to turn the tables on men who suppress women in the guise of concern. In a completely different genre, in Bulbbul the conceptualisation of the spirit cocks a snook at anti-feminist propaganda and stereotypes of the man-hating woman. At a very basic level, to me Bulbbul is what Devdas might have been if in a paranormal revisitation of that classic, Paro had turned round and landed a tight slap on the eponymous loser hero’s face.

Dutt is an accomplished lyricist, screenplay and dialogue writer for Hindi films. With Bulbbul she makes her debut as a director. Her writing for this film combines superstition, mythology and history, fantasy, folktale, feminism and fable, to deliver a story drenched in a deep sadness and the blood of women across centuries who have suffered and fought battles so that some of us may today enjoy freedoms that they could not, giving us the strength to fight newer battles against the cruelty that still survives.

The fabulous atmospherics in Bulbbul are a product of Amit Trivedi’s music in collaboration with DoP Siddharth Diwan’s low-lit colour-saturated frames and the production design by Meenal Agarwal in the leading lady’s resplendent house and neighbouring areas.

Bulbbul does not often venture into bright daylight. Using a palette reminiscent of the lovely Tumbbad (2018), it bathes the screen in shades of red with flashes of gold – the red of the Hindu bride’s clothing and sindoor symbolising the red of a virgin’s blood flowing on her wedding night and onward into a river of silent suffering or rebellion or both.

The chudail in Bulbbul fits the physical description of the furious female spook of Indian folklore – beautiful, with long hair and feet twisted backwards. Dutt however gives even that convention a neat – and heartbreaking – twist. This mystery woman is not summoned up here to startle the audience in the way traditional horror films do, but instead to set us thinking. ( Note: please read this paragraph after watching the film ) She is a personification of the rage of the marginalised, and a stark portrait of what the world might be if the oppressed – in this case, women – were to unleash their rage on the oppressor. She reminded me of a conversation I had aeons back with a senior friend who said she hoped I would not become one of “those angry feminists”, to which I remember replying, “But considering all that we are subjected to, should you not be asking why we women are so calm, and why we are not angrier?” ( Cautionary note ends)

For a film that is so thoughtful in its take on gender politics, it is surprising that Bulbbul uses a mentally challenged character as one of its metaphors for patriarchy in an India that remains largely ignorant about disabilities of the mind. I also wish the woman-as-goddess trope had not been thrown into the mix, especially since it is articulated by a man in the film. After all, pedestalisation has long been used by patriarchy to deceive women into thinking they are valued, when in fact they are being set up to be pulled down when the system pleases. The film might also have been better served if the character of Bulbbul’s brother-in-law Satya had more detail.

Of the men in the storyline, the one given most heft by the writing is the doctor (Parambrata Chattopadhyay) who becomes the heroine’s friend. And of her many relationships, the one I found most complex was with her sister-in-law, Binodini – two women united in mutual despair yet playing games with each other for survival.

Dutt has assembled a solid cast for Bulbbul . Tripti Dimri as the title character lives up to the promise she showed in Laila-Majnu . Her Bulbbul is in a state of constant internal turmoil camouflaged by an enigmatic demeanour, which the young actor conveys almost imperceptibly with the lightest of touches.

Dimri’s co-star from Laila-Majnu , Avinash Tiwary gets a role here that is not flashy like the one he had in that film or the delightful but underrated Tu Hai Mera Sunday . He too is a picture of understatement. Ruchi Mahajan who plays the child Bulbbul is a dear. My pick of the supporting cast though is the unfailingly good Chattopadhyay.

Since the film is set in Bengal, it requires a suspension of disbelief to accept characters who are all speaking Hindi. Dutt wisely does not ask her non-Bengali actors to do exaggerated Bengali accents to convince us of their characters’ ethnicity – the milieu is right, the look and styling are on point, thus making it possible for the viewer’s imagination to do the rest of the work.

Among other joys that it offers then is the fact that Bulbbul is one of those rare contemporary Hindi films to travel beyond the Hindi belt and Punjab to a culture and place that Bollywood does not often visit these days. With its eerie air and mythical, mystical tone, Dutt’s film brings alive a spectre that is not scary in the way the average Hindi film bhoot or daayin is – what is scary are the circumstances that brought this creature to such a pass.

Bulbbul is currently streaming on Netflix.

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Directed by Anvita Dutt

A fairy tale like no other

A child bride grows up to be an enigmatic woman presiding over her household, harboring a painful past as supernatural murders of men plague her village.

Triptii Dimri Rahul Bose Avinash Tiwary Parambrata Chatterjee Paoli Dam Varun Buddhadev Ruchi Mahajan Sameer Deshpande Veera Kapur Ee

Director Director

Anvita Dutt

Producers Producers

Anushka Sharma Karnesh Sharma

Writer Writer

Editor editor.

Rameshwar S. Bhagat

Cinematography Cinematography

Siddharth Diwan

Clean Slate Films

Releases by Date

24 jun 2020, releases by country.

Digital Netflix
Digital M18 Netflix

94 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by nina ★★★★ 3

im a simple lesbian. i see a pretty woman murdering men, i fall in love,

Review by sree ★★★★

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

[twirls hair] i love it when women kill abusive men

Review by dee ★★★★ 1

In this house we do not ship Bulbbul with Satya.

Review by Vishwas Verma 🟠🟢🔵 ★★★½ 5

Badi Haweliyon Mein Bade Raaz Hote Hain... Chup Rehna...

A good kinda romantic horror mystery. Tripti did outstanding, her beautiful smile makes scenes look more beautiful. Avinash, Parambrata, Paoli Dam & Rahul Bose also done well. Anvita did very well in her directorial debut. It feels like how simple a story can be presented in a very beautiful et dak way, throughout provoking.

1920 movie kinda feel.

Review by haley ★★★½

don't you just love it when beautiful women kill awful men?

Review by Anushka ★★★★

I feel like this movie deserves more praise because honestly it was brilliant. Yeah it was predictable.... but wasn’t that the point?? I mean I don’t think we can really say much about that when most, nearly all, of Indian cinema is predictable and frankly kinda misogynistic. So watching bulbbul was just nice because though some parts were a bit rushed it still got to the point and was pretty well done. I love Indian film but I guess I liked this movie so much because it’s so different to the conventional Bollywood movies. Oh and the cinematography could actually have not been done better, so red it’s fantastic.

Review by ChandraKanth❄ ★★★½

Technically brilliant, but the movie is just fine. It just has a touch of horror, but it is an emotional drama. A decent watch.

Review by Kriti 6

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault, Domestic Abuse

First off my expectations for this movie were astronomically high. Things I'm interested in include early 20th century Bengal, folktales, Laila-Majnu (2018), the feminist films produced by Clean Slate Films (I haven't seen Phillauri but I love Pari and NH10) and this movie seemed to include all of this so naturally my expectations ballooned up and exited the stratosphere.

If you go into this movie thinking that it is a horror film then you will be disappointed. This is not a horror film but an origin story. In a lot of ways this movie reminds me of Pari though simpler and not as ambitious which is not necessarily a deterrent. The object of horror…

Review by jo ★★★

ofc i support men’s rights!

men’s rights to get murdered by the demon woman!!!

Review by 20oldboy03 ★★½ 2

Horroroktober die Zwölfte (12/2)

Feat. DuBFaL-Horrorweeks 2021

Nun habe ich auch meine erste Gurke erwischt, dennoch danke an letterboxd.com/filmworld123/#avatar-large für den Tipp und meinen ersten und sicherlich nicht letzten Horrorfilm aus Indien.

„Bulbbul“ hat so einige Schwächen wie:

-eine sehr spannungsarme Handlung

-weil sehr vorhersehbar

-ein sehr, und unnötig komprimiertes Setting

-ein Horror der sehr harmlos daherkommt

-ebenso das Wesen, das Monster an sich

-eine Optik die verkennt wie anspruchsvoll das Farbspiel ist, siehe „Mandy“ der es da deutlich gelungener macht

Alle Punkte zusammengefasst ergeben eine 2,5/5.

Made in India-Ranking - letterboxd.com/20oldboy03/list/best-of-india/#:~:text=https%3A//boxd.it/cK9uK

Review by M S Krishna Prateek

" You are all the same. " " Now we are all the same. "

Expected a different period horror from the trailer, but the film despite moving forward on both the legs of period drama and horror couldn't stand upright on either of them perfectly and twisted itself into a highly predictable fare for me where only the visual flair and Tripti Dimri's silent badassery stand out. The intention to move forward in the mainstream medium by bringing to fore the issues of child marriages or domestic abuses that are pushing us backwards in terms of equality ever since is appreciated and brings along several themes like gender equality and supernatural from Anushka Sharma's previous productions.

As a period fairytale, this was bloody…

Review by {Todd} ★★½ 2

"I like the idea" -Sudip,

- 2020 Ranked: boxd.it/4zdAI

Bulbbul is a hybrid. Another film in what I would call Soap Opera Horror... films that are for the most part melodramas or intense dramas, that incorporate limited horror elements. In this film you explore the fraught life of a woman living with elites in an arranged marriage in an isolated area where men are being murdered. While the violence is highly stylized this has misery porn elements to it that might turn off viewers that are looking for a good time. Many will roll their eyes, wondering how many average rap revenge films the world needs before we all get it.

Bulbbul is a pretty film, with fun use of…

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Bulbbul movie review: Pretty but problematic, Anushka Sharma’s Netflix film is a flawed fairytale

Bulbbul movie review: thinly written but meticulously shot, producer anushka sharma’s follow-up to the brilliant paatal lok is a bit of a letdown..

Bulbbul Director - Anvita Dutt Cast - Tripti Dimri, Rahul Bose, Avinash Tiwary, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Paoli Dam

Bulbbul movie review: Tripti Dimri in a still from the new Netflix film.

Over-directed but underwritten, Bulbbul is a visually striking film that is let down by a weak script.

From debutante director Anvita Dutt (whose track record as dialogue writer includes the runaway hit Queen but also Shaandaar, Kambakkht Ishq and Housefull), Netflix’s Bulbbul is the second streaming film this month, after Amazon’s Gulabo Sitabo , that is set inside a foreboding mansion. But while the dignified ‘haveli’ in Shoojit Sircar’s movie took on a life of its own, the one in Bulbbul, like the film itself, can’t help but feel artificial.

As an industry, Bollywood has been famously incapable of producing good horror cinema, with the odd exceptions, of course. Invariably, horror in India is combined with other genres such as musical or romance — ghosts, you see, mustn’t get in the way of the films’ box office potential. So for Bulbbul to whole-heartedly embrace its Gothic horror origins — it’s Kamal Amrohi’s Mahal by way of Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak — is rather refreshing.

In 1881, Bulbbul, a precocious girl with an appetite for scary stories is married into a wealthy ‘zamindar’ family. In a deft move it is revealed that her husband isn’t the boy Satya, with whom she’s struck a quick friendship, but rather Satya’s sinister-looking elder brother Indranil, the Thakur, played by Rahul Bose. The Thakur has a twin, Mahendra, who is developmentally challenged and is married to a conniving woman named Binodini. Fate has forever sentenced her to play second fiddle to Bulbbul in the household, something that Binodini, the ‘chhoti bahu’, is very bothered by.

The characters established, the films jumps 20 years into the future. Satya, on his way back to the ‘haveli’ after having studied law in London, is informed that a series of mysterious deaths have taken place in the time that he has been away. The villagers seem to believe that it is the doing of a witch that haunts the surrounding forest. Satya, in proper Jonathan Harker mode, dismisses the claims as old wives’ tales.

But a lot has changed in the years that Satya has been gone. His brother Mahendra has been killed in his sleep, and his other brother, the Thakur, has disappeared. Bulbbul, meanwhile, is no longer the spirited young girl that she used to be; she has now fully embraced her life as the ‘Thakurain’ of the house, lounging on settees all day, being fed paan and sherbet, exuding a playful yet unsettlingly self-assured energy.

It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, but Bulbbul certainly treats its audience as if it is the first film they’ve seen in their lives.

Avinash Tiwary and Parambrata Chattopadhyay in a still from Netflix’s Bulbbul.

Because the characters are so thinly written and the surprises so carelessly telegraphed, Dutt’s film is forced to rely more heavily on technical details. For instance, it would have been wonderful to explore the character of Binodini with more patience. She’s an interesting foil to Bulbbul; entrapped instead of empowered, scheming instead of self-reliant.

Swathed perpetually by the red glow of a blood moon, the nighttime sequences in Bulbbul are undeniably gorgeous, besides a couple of noticeable instances where cinematographer Siddharth Diwan’s camera basically breaks character, and surrenders its otherwise stately presence in favour of flashy handheld mayhem. It simply doesn’t gel. You’ll notice it, too.

Bulbbul also features a lush, orchestral score by the great Amit Trivedi, evoking memories of his terrific (but of iffy integrity) work in Vikramaditya Motwane’s Lootera. In a way, there is a strain of melancholy that runs through both movies, and Trivedi is able to capture it.

But employing a needlessly non-linear narrative turns out to be an exercise in futility, because virtually every twist can be seen coming from a mile away. And because so much of the film feels so deliberately planned, Dutt routinely finds herself drowning in style over substance, her script devoid of spontaneity.

Rahul Bose in a still from Netflix’s Bulbbul.

A couple of scenes in particular, both involving violence against women, are questionably staged. Instead of evoking anger, or even repulsion, by shooting the first scene in stylised slow-motion that would made Zack Snyder twitch in ecstasy, Dutt essentially distracts the audience’s attention from the horror that is unfolding and turns it instead towards the immaculate beauty of her frames. The second scene, involving a rape, goes on for way longer than it has any reason to. What this does is play into the (problematic) trope that in order to blossom, a woman must first be (violently) broken. There’s a reason why the rape-revenge subgenre of horror is considered outdated.

Also read: Revenge movie review: The most provocative film of 2018 invades your home, abetted by Netflix

I admire the fact that producers Anushka Sharma and her brother Karnesh are continuing to champion genre cinema, despite falling short of expectations more often than not. The disappointment is only amplified because the sibling duo’s brilliant Paatal Lok is still so fresh in our minds. But even though Bulbbul never quite takes flight, neither does it fall to its death. It’s no Mrs Serial Killer . But it isn’t Sacred Games either.

Follow @htshowbiz for more The author tweets @RohanNaahar

Anushka Sharma
Tripti Dimri
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Bulbbul film review: feminist storytelling done right.

Bulbbul surprises with its near-perfect production and a genuine feminist message.

Indie Journal

Jun 29, 2020 6:25 pm.

Pay to keep good journalism alive

- Amit Bhalerao and Viplov Wingkar

'A child bride grows up to be an enigmatic woman presiding over her household, harbouring a painful past as supernatural murders of men plague her village.' - Netflix India.

As we know, Netflix India's horror track record has been very poor in the past two years and there was not much excitement at all for Bulbbul after the disappointment one experienced with Betaal.

But lo and behold, Bulbbul comes in and surprises everyone with its near-perfect production and a genuine feminist message. Bulbbul is the directorial debut of Anvita Dutt, produced by Anushka Sharma's Clean Slate Films production house.

This review is full of spoilers to help discuss the themes and symbolism in the film so we suggest one watch the film first and come here again for greater insights.

The plot of the film

The film opens with a five-year-old girl Bulbbul (Tripti Dimri) getting married to a fully grown adult Bade Thakur, Indranil (Rahul Bose) in the Bengal presidency of 1881. Bade Thakur has two younger siblings, Satya (Avinash Tiwary) and Mahendra. While Mahendra is already grown-up but mentally challenged, his sibling Satya is of somewhat the same age as Bulbbul.

Over the next fifteen years, Bulbbul and Satya form a friendly bond due to their similar age, and due to this Bulbbul naturally falls in love with Satya. Indranil starts to suspect Bulbbul of infidelity and sends away his brother Satya to England for his further education.

Satya returns to his home in Bengal after five years and finds out that some kind of killer is hunting the villagers down. While the villagers are sure that the murders are done by a forest witch; Satya is sure that a killer is on loose and he sets to bring down the killer.

What's to like

The Idea of women's liberation from cultural, social and sexual exploitation in the colonial casteist feudal India and the mythological parallels

While films and shows in India tend to always appear as edgy and over the top when talking about feminism, Bulbbul actually presents a genuinely heartfelt feminist message. The feminist aspect of the film strongly resembles the position of women, the exploitative one, in Hindu mythology.

*MAJOR SPOILERS* Bulbbul is married to the Bade Thakur but she becomes the property of all the three Thakur brothers just like Draupadi in Mahabharata. The character of Satya can be said to be a character resembling Krishna. While Draupadi feels or other women feel Leela for Krishna, Krishna himself only aligns himself as their sakha or friend. Same way Satya acts like a Krishna to Bulbbul's Draupadi but yeah there are differences. On the other hand, Dr. Sudip can be said to be the Karna of this story. He is masculine, compassionate, and intelligent like Karna. Sudip is in love with Bulbbul but his social class and position make him artificially incapable of achieving that love just Like Karna's caste made him unable to achieve Draupadi's love.

Another woman that Bulbbul reminds us of is Sita from Ramayana. Indranil suspects Bulbbul with infidelity and punishes her just like Ram suspected of Sita. While Sita had to go through the agnipariksha, Bulbbul had to go through domestic violence. Satya in this way can be said to represent Ravan who never touched Sita. Though Sita's agnipariksha only intended to burn her; Bulbbul's agnipariksha results in the burning down of a whole forest.

Finally, Bulbbul also represented Maa Kali as Kali the Liberator. But instead of the devi possessing and liberating her, Bulbbul herself gets liberated on her own and starts killing all the paedophiles and abusive men of the town which resulted in the liberation of more women.

Bulbbul's story can be said to be that of the Earth and the males in the film can be said to be the representative of human greed. When Bulbbul, like the Earth, gets repeatedly exploited she becomes numb to all of it but the men of the human greed keep going on with her which results in the burning of Bulbbul, the creationist, or Earth.

The toe ring in the film symbolizes the objectification of women as a mere machine of production and also the patriarchal control that men possess over women. When the ring in her toes gets destroyed Bulbbul is liberated from that control.

The film showed the fact that women don't share any sisterhood even if they are exploited equally. In a capitalist structure, women are the biggest exploiters of women. This is because even in exploitation women tend to place their material interests in the forefront rather than compassion. There should be a comradeship that results in the unshackling of patriarchal chains but it is not possible in a capitalist economy supported by the patriarchal structure.

The film also touched the idea that women in rich families tend to be abused more than the average lower class or even lower-middle-class families. When Chhoti Bahu (Paoli Dam) tells Bulbbul that there are big mysteries in big mansions, ignore them and drown in whatever material desires you get to fulfill in a big house. Bulbbul is told to hide her being raped just to preserve the material prosperity attained through this patriarchal exploitation.

Wo pagal hai, par kya hua, resham milega, sona milega, wo pagal hai par uska bhai toh hai na, wo tumhe khush rakhega, woh tumhe sab dega. This whole thinking may feel like an old practice but trust me it is rooted in Indian society. Women are married to rich men even when they are abusive, womanizers, or alcoholic. Baccha hone ke baad sudhar jayega, paise toh hai, accha kamata hai, filhaal thoda seh lo.

A very critical point that the film touches is that the men have the privilege to consider them as Robinhood or some nonmystical hero for justice but the same kind of freedom is not available to the women and then women like Bulbbul have to take the form of Kali, a goddess to seek justice. Because we see women as an example of greatness only in the form of a Goddess or a Queen.

While Bulbul's protest to this structural violence with her own violence may feel justifiable in that historical context we have to remember that violence cannot be the answer to the patriarchal exploitation of women. Men are not born criminals. The exploitation of women is an ideological act first and foremost that results in the physical act of violence. To counter this we have to change the deep rooting of these patriarchal ideas through a by changing their minds through ideological dialogues.

There are more feminist ideas here but this will be it. One appreciates the feminist tone of this film, it feels natural, real, and not too on the nose. Horror does not have to be supernatural, horror is what reality is.

The Technical Aspects

Bulbbul is a real masterpiece when it comes to the camerawork and cinematography. From the opening sequence, one is pleased with the aesthetics, the set pieces, the colour choices, and the wardrobe used for the film.

See the wide range of colours used in the film. The tone and the feel were on point in this film. An astounding job by the cameraman, set designer, and the director. The film has this perfect vibe of the 1800s and the colour scheme is perfectly conveying the flow of all the emotions whether its fear, love, or mystery.

Another fact is that film does not hold back when showing some intense scenes. I literally felt two of the most miserable scenes in the film unwatchable; not because they were cinematically bad but because they kept going on and on and I couldn't watch such a real character to suffer so much. The soundtrack was good if not memorable.

Tripti Dimri is stunning!

Tripti Dimri has given an outstanding performance as Bulbbul. She is innocent, magnetic, playful, vengeful, and mystifying at the same time. This is the performance she will be remembered for. She has perfectly encapsulated the creationist and the destructive force that a woman can be. You will fall in love with her once you watch this film.

We are seeing Rahul Bose after a long time on screen. His performance required that sociopathic air and the shades of violence that come with it and he portrayed it with ease. Excellent performance on his part.

Paoli Dam's portrayal of jealous, lustful, and broken Chhoti Bahu was good too. Other actors were perfect too; none of them felt unnecessary or incompetent.

What doesn't work

Yeah, we were so much into the message that we forgot about the plot.

While one may love the symbolism and the message, the plot leaves the film to be very predictable from the get-go. A film first and foremost should be enjoyable and it is enjoyable but we have to overlook some plot details.

There is nothing new plotwise and while the film feels completely fine till the big reveal; later it succumbs to an aimless or very unsatisfying conclusion. Though the film leaves an impact but the last fifteen or so minutes were very bland compared to what we saw in the former part. There is nothing much to dislike other than that.

Though the film is not perfect plotwise but is a near-perfect representation of feminism and that rarely happens with Indian cinema. The production quality is top-notch, the film is beautiful to look at and I want everyone to watch Bulbbul just for the message and the acting.

One will definitely love Bulbbul!

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Bulbbul Movie Review: Anushka Sharma’s Netflix Production Is Wired All Wrong

Utterly predictable, terribly boring..

Photo Credit: Netflix

Tripti Dimri as and in Bulbbul

Bulbbul now streaming on Netflix worldwide
Tripti Dimri, Rahul Bose in Bulbbul movie cast
Written, directed by debutante Anvita Dutt

Bulbbul , the latest Indian original from Netflix, is a disaster. In a smarter film, its title character — Mrs. Bulbbul Chaudhary (Tripti Dimri, from Laila Majnu) — would have made a fascinating villain. For most of Bulbbul , she's adorned in the most exquisite sarees and jewellery. Whenever she's sitting idle, which is nearly always, as the lady of the house, Bulbbul fans herself with peacock feathers. And she makes no attempt to hide her true feelings, smiling ear-to-ear or heartily laughing at the predicament of others. Unfortunately, Bulbbul is stuck in a drab, inert, and ridiculous film, the kind whose plot you can entirely predict after watching the first few minutes. It's only the film's characters — except for Bulbbul — who fail to see otherwise, to the point where it all feels like a giant prank, as if they are merely pretending to act oblivious.

Nearly all of that is down to writer-director Anvita Dutt, a lyricist and dialogue writer who makes her directorial debut on the Netflix original. Bulbbul — a period supernatural tale set in Bengal — centres on the folklore of chudail , a woman who rises from the dead (with inverted legs) after an unnatural death. The English subtitles translate it as “demon-woman” but her behaviour on Bulbbul is more akin to a vampire. Though Dutt erases the misogynistic and patriarchal overtones of chudail to put a feminist spin on the story, she doesn't add to it in any meaningful manner. Moreover, Bulbbul 's Bengal setting makes zero sense. Not a single character talks in anything but Hindi, and the film doesn't use the localised term for chudail . It may as well be set in any part of (British) India.

Though you wouldn't even know Bulbbul was set in British India by simply watching the film, since there's no trace of the British, except for a throwaway dialogue. Or the three words of on-screen text at the very beginning, which states “1881, Bengal Presidency”. The Netflix film opens with a child marriage, as a young Bulbbul (Ruchi Mahajan, from Yeh Teri Galiyan) is wedded off to a much older man, Indranil Thakur (Rahul Bose, from Shaurya). Bulbbul tries to throw viewers off by employing a happy background score and featuring a friend her age in Satyajeet Thakur (Varun Paras Buddhadev, from Koi Laut Ke Aaya Hai), but it does such a poor job that it serves as an early indicator of the film's predictability. Bulbbul is the only one convinced she was due to marry Satya.

Fast forward two decades as Satya (Avinash Tiwary, reunited with Laila Majnu co-star Dimri) returns from London, where he's been studying to be a lawyer. In the five years he's been gone, Bulbbul (Dimri) has assumed her aforementioned status as the lady of the house. Her husband is nowhere to be seen, her bumbling fool of a brother-in-law is dead, and his widow and her scheming sister-in-law Binodini (Pauli Dam, from Hate Story) has been forced to shave her head and out of the palatial house. The relationship between Bulbbul and Binodini is like a relic from the soap opera era, full of jealousy and pettiness. (Strangely, there are no kids to be seen anywhere, which is curious given being baby-factories was deemed as the only reason for women's existence in those times.)

The film's story unfolds in two parallel timelines thereafter. There's the one in 1901 as Satya investigates a series of murders, solely of men, which are attributed to a chudail by village folk, for the bite marks on the victims. And the other consists of flashbacks, as we witness Bulbbul continue to pine after Satya and suffer a litany of atrocities from everyone else in the household. It's obvious to everyone and their grandma that Bulbbul had a thing for Satya and that she's the chudail — something she all but hints at on multiple occasions — but it takes ages for the other characters to figure it out. And to make matters worse, Bulbbul keeps on hammering home the same point across multiple scenes, wasting time on a film that runs just 90 minutes.

The amateurish writing and direction is matched by a lazy background score on Bulbbul , consisting of generic tunes that seem like the first search result you'd get on Google after typing “horror music”. That's surprising given Amit Trivedi is the composer, known for his work on the likes of Andhadhun, Dev.D, and Udaan. That lack of originality translates as both oppressive and over-the-top, which is also the case with the saturated tones of red — the cinematographer is Siddharth Diwan (Queen) and the production designer Meenal Agarwal (Dum Laga Ke Haisha) — that bake night-time scenes to convey a sense of dread. Diwan's camerawork is the only technical aspect of Bulbbul that doesn't call attention to itself, with the other departments seemingly succumbing to the director's wishes.

(second from right) Avinash Tiwary as Satya in Bulbbul Photo Credit: Netflix

All that ultimately results in a catastrophe of epic proportions. Its rote, tired dialogues will make you roll your eyes. The tonal dissonance and foolish characters will pull you out of the movie. And it doesn't have anything worthwhile to say about male entitlement and the treatment of women. In the hands of a more capable writer-director, Bulbbul would've upended viewer's expectations from a movie about the folklore of chudail , than merely play into them. It could also have been Netflix's first Bengali-language original. Instead, Anushka Sharma has helped deliver a dud for Netflix, which may as well write off the first half of 2020, having given us seven straight Indian films on the spectrum of mediocre to downright terrible. It's almost as if the streaming service is masochistic.

Bulbbul is now streaming on Netflix in India and across the world.

Can Netflix force Bollywood to reinvent itself? We discussed this on Orbital , our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts or RSS . You can also download the episode or just hit the play button below.

Release Date 24 June 2020
Language Hindi
Genre Horror, Thriller, Drama
Cast Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Paoli Dam, Rahul Bose, Parambrata Chatterjee
Director Anvita Dutt
Producer Anushka Sharma, Karnesh Ssharma, Hetvi Karia

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Bulbbul movie review: A powerfully feminist, revisionist tale

Bulbbul is fashioned as a sharply relevant fable. it is a powerfully feminist, revisionist tale of a woman wronged, and it is told with economy, precision, style and feeling..

Bulbbul movie cast: Tripti Dimri, Avinash Tiwary, Rahul Bose, Parambrata Chattopadhyay, Paoli Dam, Ruchi Mahajan, Varun Paras Buddhadev Bulbbul movie director: Anvita Dutt Bulbbul movie rating: Three and a half stars

A beautiful woman is dangerous. If she smiles to herself, or is self-contained, or has the temerity to express her inner thoughts which are connected solely to her being, or isn’t automatically and permanently subservient to the men she is surrounded by, she is doubly dangerous.

Anvita Dutt’s striking debut feature is set in the late 19th century Bengal. It uses the supernatural horror genre to tell the story of a wide-eyed child bride whose quest for a kindred soul and kindness pulls her deep into peril. Bulbbul (Dimri), a free spirit who used to love climbing trees and plucking raw mangoes in her ‘maayka’, has to turn into an obedient wife to her much older husband Indranil (Bose), who lives in a big haveli, with his mentally challenged twin Mahendra (Bose again), Mahendra’s wife Binodini (Dam), and younger brother Satya.

There are so many influences jostling in Dutt’s film, which she has also written, that it’s hard to keep track: right on top is Rabindranath Tagore’s classic Chokher Bali—not just the names Binodini and Mahendra, but the messy strands of the relationship between a young widow, a child-bride and a brother-in-law. The ‘badi bahu’ reference feels like it’s harking back to Abrar Alvi’s iconic Sahib Biwi aur Ghulam. The girl-trapped-in-domesticity in Ray’s Charulata, who is shown a different world through a visitor/ interloper. And more.

And yet, Bulbbul is very much its own film, the mix of classic pre-Renaissance Bengal and desi horror gothic making for gripping viewing. It’s also one of those films whose design and soundscape is in perfect synch: Amit Trivedi’s music lulls you, and beguiles you. And, of course, red is the colour of the movie. The deep crimson palette sometimes becomes too obvious a signifier for the bloody goings-on in and around the haveli. But that’s all right, because it resonates. Because we know, don’t we, that women who cannot be contained by their ‘bichhiyas’ (toe rings worn by traditional married women) and ‘sindoor’, need to be controlled, even today. Patriarchy was alive and well then, and hasn’t gone anywhere.

Dutt uses the ancient trope of a bloodthirsty ‘chudail with ultey pair’, a familiar creature tale in our scary ‘kisse-kahaani’, to create dread and fear. The writing is skilful and stays on point, and the performances are all solid: Bose in the twin roles of the suspicious ‘thakur moshai’, as well as the man trapped in his damaged mind, Tiwary as the ‘devar’ who is a constant companion to his as-young-as-himself lovely bhabhi, Chatterjee as the ‘doctor babu’ who has a soft spot for the ‘badi bahu’. Dam is effective as the let-down ‘choti bahu’ who wreaks damage. And as the little girl who grows into a woman, her enigmatic smile hiding the pain which she harnesses to great effect, the doe-eyed Dimri is terrific.

For a film which so beautifully recreates a specific period — the thick ‘alta on the feet of the women, the shaved heads and the all-white attire of the widows, the crisp dhutis-and-fabulous shawls of the men, the ‘paalkis’ drawn by the men in service of the zamindar, — some of the lines are awkward. ‘Kaunsa aapne inka saamaan baandhna hai’, sounds much too North Indian contemporary, as does ‘aap hamaare liye chutney banaaogi’. And the corporeal shape of the ‘chudail’ becomes a little too literal, in visual translation; you wish some mystery keeps shrouding that figure.

But these are minor quibbles. Bulbbul is fashioned as a sharply relevant fable. It is a powerfully feminist, revisionist tale of a woman wronged, and it is told with economy, precision, style and feeling.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bulbbul’ on Netflix, A Suspenseful Tale About A Child Bride and a Murderous Spirit

Where to stream:.

This Hindi-language film is the directorial debut from lyricist and screenwriter Anvita Dutt, and is another entry into Netflix India’s original film slate. How does this period piece stack up?

BULBBUL : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Bulbbul is a child bride in 1880s India, married off to a royal but unloving man, Indranil. Bulbbul takes a liking to her husband’s brother, Satya, who is the same age as her, and after noticing their attachment, Indranil sends Satya away to London to study.

Years later, Satya returns to his village and to Bulbbul, who now carries herself differently after Satya’s departure. Satya arrives not only to a changed household, but also a changed village. He begins investigating the many mysterious murders that are occurring around town, but never looks in the most obvious place.

What Will It Remind You Of?: Bulbbul ‘s central murder suspect is largely believed by the villagers to be a “demon woman” that appears in red mist before she kills a man. Stay with me here…but the image of her silhouette against a red backdrop immediately brought back memories of Game of Thrones ‘s resident Lady in Red, Melisandre. The mystery and intrigue around both characters only adds to the striking similarity.

The setting of opulent 19th century India and a forbidden love storyline will also give you Devdas vibes, one of the most tragic but beloved Bengali tales of all time.

Performance Worth Watching: Tripti Dimri’s central performance as Bulbbul is crucial to the film, and she knocks it out of the park. Dimri is beguiling, coy, inviting, and mysterious all at the same time, making her a strong new on-screen talent for Indian cinema.

Memorable Dialogue: “Can you tell me a story?” Bulbbul and Satya’s friendship and distant, unspoken love is predicated on the stories that they tell each other, starting on the night of Bulbbul’s marriage and continuing on until the day he is sent away. Spoken and written, these stories are their attachment in physical form and are a crucial piece of evidence for Indranil’s jealousy.

Sex and Skin: Unfortunately the only sex we get is a rape. While it’s obviously horrifying to watch, its existence is pivotal to the film and not included just for shock value, so I will allow it.

Our Take: From the first frame, Bulbbul pulls you in–the colors are rich, the setting is luscious, the costumes are regal, and the score is haunting. As a story, I love the way that Bulbbul blends genres: Satya and Bulbbul’s story of starcrossed lovers is the undercurrent of the film, but mystery, sci-fi and thriller aspects are interwoven delicately throughout. While I saw the film’s reveal coming from a mile away (and I suspect you will, too), there were still moments of genuine surprise and I was fully immersed throughout.

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Subtly, Bulbbul is a feminist film that showcases the plight of women while celebrating the ways that they prevail in the face of cruelty. Bulbbul and her sister-in-law Binodini endure major trauma at the hands of their husbands and the other men in their sphere, and without much agency over their lives, they are inevitably pitted against one another. Dutt is careful in her contrast between the two women. One has chosen to suppress her true feelings, while the other wears her heart on her sleeve; they are two ends of the same stick.

The best part, aside from the heaps of praise I have already shelled out, is that Bulbbul manages to tell this beautiful and intricate story in an hour and 34 minutes. *Insert raising hands emoji*

Our Call: STREAM IT. Suspenseful, visually arresting, and chock-full of charismatic performances, Bulbbul is an incredibly impressive debut from director Anvita Dutt and a must-see for your next movie night.

Should you stream or skip the supernatural drama #Bulbbul on @netflix ? #SIOSI #BulbbulNetflix — Decider (@decider) June 29, 2020

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Radhika Menon ( @menonrad ) is a TV-obsessed writer based in New York City. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, and Brown Girl Magazine. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.

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The Horror, History and Power of ‘Bulbbul’

The cast and crew of the film on repurposing an age-old nightmare for a modern-day clarion call

Tripti Dimri in and as 'Bulbbul.' Photo: Netflix

*This piece contains spoilers for the film ‘Bulbbul’

“I’ve always been delighted by fairy tales in the true sense of the word; fairy tales with teeth,” says Anvita Dutt. Set at the turn of the 19th century in Bengal, the director-writer’s latest feature Bulbbul is a supernatural thriller with a subversive mandate. The Netflix film takes the old yarn about women and witchcraft and spins it into a rich tapestry of timeless horror; a powerful portrait of trauma and agency that’s reminiscent of a looking glass into the present. When monsters lurk both outside and within— Bulbbul is the chilling clarion call.

Tracing the footsteps of the eponymous character (played by Tripti Dimri), Dutt’s directorial debut melds her penchant for fantasy with deception. While 2017’s Phillauri (for which Dutt wrote the screenplay) explored a spectral love story within alternative history and 2018’s Pari (for which Dutt wrote the dialogue) inverted the lens on humanity and demons, Bulbbul borrows from feminist canon to chronicle a child-bride’s magical story of coming of age. In a village beset with a spate of mysterious deaths, the return of a family member (Avinash Tiwary as Satya) heralds a witch hunt, implicating a centuries-old chudail (witch) once alive only in Bulbbul’s bedtime stories. The line between evil and divine then blurs as Bulbbul’s past and present chart an uneasy history; resulting in a reckoning that’s been 20 years in the making.

(Left) The director-writer of ‘Bulbbul’—Anvita Dutt. (Right) Ruchi Mahajan as Bulbbul in ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

Dutt was drawn to a time almost a century ago because she wanted Bulbbul to feel unearthly; “a world that would have mysticism and myths as an everyday part of the fabric,” she says. Informed by the Palladian aesthetics of neoclassical architecture, the vermilion color palettes of Bengal as well as celebrated artist Raja Ravi Varma’s fusion paintings, Dutt’s story first found grounding in the evocative details of the period, rife with arts and revolution. The director-writer’s allure with Indian folk stories, particularly the writings of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay coupled with the classic canon of Thakurmar Jhuli by Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder, were also incendiary to Dutt’s spark of Bulbbul and her Bengal. An ardent reader of the works of fantasy, horror and sci-fi authors Neil Gaiman, Ursula Le Guin, Terry Pratchett and Stephen King, Dutt then instinctively knew she was going to weave Bulbbul as a fantastical tale. In spite of the intricately sketched out setting, Dutt maintains this story could exist anywhere; beholden to a protagonist transcendent and representative of the universal feelings of freedom and fear. “It could have been underwater, but Bulbbul’s story would still remain Bulbbul’s story,” she says.

Dimri’s Bulbbul is a duality of two divides, the cradle of the goddess and the cauldron of the witch. Birthed by a life of control and violence, Dutt poses Bulbbul, whether intentionally or inadvertently, as a figure up for debate. Blessed by Kali and christened the chudail , how do we view a woman taking her fate into her own hands?

Tripti Dimri in and as ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

Navigating her roles as Bulbbul and the chudail required Dimri to connect with her inner self. Before she could enter workshops with her co-actors, Dimri first spent two months with Dutt unraveling the workings of Bulbbul’s mind; visiting the nimble footsteps of Bulbbul as a dauntless child before growing into a powerful thakurain (landowner) of devilish intrigue. The actor states a charting of similarities as the key exercise that helped her bridge the motives of her characters. “I am very close to the Bulbbul who is innocent. It was easy for me to understand her mental state. The challenging part was to understand the transformed Bulbbul’s world,” says Dimri. Focusing on her breath, the actor indulged a part of herself at peace with her whole and disconnected from immediate reality every time she played the witch; Bulbbul’s wicked brilliance unleashed in a form of her choosing. “It was a strange but very useful exercise to understand the chudail ’s world. It was the most difficult thing I’ve had to do for a film,” she says.

Toeing the line between vigilantism and subversion, Dutt pokes holes into a millennia’s web of social conditioning through Bulbbul. The director-writer even plays with sonic and visual motifs to upend the perception of good and evil in the film. Bulbbul ’s female characters channel the ululudhvani ; the lilting ululation that rings out during celebrations; it’s purpose to ward off evil. The film interestingly employs the sound in two particular scenes: one, wherein Bulbbul is a child marrying an older thakur (landowner) Indranil (Rahul Bose) and two, in the film’s final scene wherein she reveals herself as the fabled chudail to her abusive husband. Dutt views the motif as the ultimate clarion call in Bulbbul . “It’s an eerie sound saying ‘’back off’ to what is not good and should stay away from you; that you are safe in the sound. It is also a warning. You think that the warning is to protect you from evil but it could also be a warning to yo u. Like ‘Hey buddy, you are crossing the line here. You are in danger now because you thought it is your birthright to inflict pain on someone and you think you can get away with it’,” says Dutt. Underlining the ululudhvani , the director-writer also maintains that it’s symbolic of her protagonist Bulbbul’s avatars. “It was about welcoming the bride, whichever form she takes,” says Dutt.

Avinash Tiwary as Satya and Parambrata Chattopadhyay as Sudip in ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

In the visual plane, Dutt and cinematographer Siddharth Diwan drench Bulbbul in hues of red and yellow, heralding a reckoning of fire and blood in the film’s most revelatory scenes. They set up a colorful smokescreen and invite viewers to discern the difference between good and evil. “Both the ululating and the colors, I would say are not just art for art’s sake. I hope it is perceived as something beautiful and evocative, but it is actually an inherent part of the story and storytelling,” says Dutt.

The inescapable horror of Bulbbul indisputably lies in its characters’ trauma; the bloody disciplining that is meted out in Indranil’s manor and the retribution that strings justice in corpses after. Interestingly, Dimri is not the only actor playing two roles in the film. Bose too joins Dimri in essaying two characters: one, the authoritative Indranil and the other, Mahendra—his twin brother with a mental illness. L inked by a bond of obligation and control, the two characters are principal aggressors in Bulbbul and Bose underlines an important dynamic of power between the twins.

Tripti Dimri as Bulbbul and Rahul Bose as Mahendra in ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

“Y ou get the first warning of what could happen in the beginning of the film, when Mahendra comes to the child bride and says, ‘ Gudiya, khelo (Doll, let’s play)’ and Indranil comes in and says, ‘Mahendra,’ in a reprimand (saying) that you know, you should not be here, what are you doing here? And if at all, there is a warning bell sounded by the director, it is then—that this guy needs to be kept in control and the only person to do it is the elder brother,” says Bose.

Indranil commits an act of physical violence and Mahendra commits an act of sexual violence; both hold positions that allow their deeds to go unchecked. Bose thinks their motives and consciences to be poles apart, delving into how he and Dutt approached charting a character with a mental illness, who also commits a crime. “ The one (condition) that we arrived at (for Mahendra) was one of arrested development, that he is a child in his head and his behavior, but he’s grown into this 40-year-old man and zamindar . Even though it might take the form of the tantrum of a child, he gets exactly what he wants, whenever he wants it. He’s never been told that there are some things you can and cannot do. So when he asks, Bulbbul to khelo (play) when she’s suffering on the bed after having been beaten and her feet have been broken by Indranil, he can’t understand why she’s not playing,” he says.

Rahul Bose as Mahendra and Tripti Dimri as Bulbbul in ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

Bose doesn’t condone his character’s violence, relaying how he and Dutt mapped Mahendra’s delayed cognizance in light of his state of mind and friendship with Bulbbul. “Only after he realizes that she’s (Bulbbul) lifeless, does he figure that something has gone very wrong. And bells ring deep within his psyche, like it would with a child—that there’s something very wrong, that Gudiya (Bulbbul) is not moving anymore, she’s not playing anymore. The tragedy is that he actually is deeply fond of and devoted to her. She’s the only person who treats him with any real affection. So it’s a very, very sad moment. It breaks him because in his own head, he can’t process that. He’s lost his only friend,” he says.

Dutt, in turn, also views the twin brothers’ dynamic as representative of the hegemonies and fallout of patriarchy. About how she wanted the film’s arcs of trauma and consequence to play out, the director says, “Bulbbul’s struggle is in a time period where there are thresholds and boundaries set for her. Everyone else other than her seems to be in a position of perceived power. Both Indranil and Mahendra have a sense of entitlement over Bulbbul; for them, no rules exist. We had a lot of discussions on which would be the right pitch where we are doing justice to the story and the character—without hopefully harming either.”

Tripti Dimri as Bulbbul and Avinash Tiwary as Satya in ‘Bulbbul.’ Photo: Netflix

Steeped in lore, the film is a deceptive melding of history, fantasy and horror, spinning the ingrained on tradition’s discus to subvert beliefs with distinctive flair. Whether toe rings on twisted feet, midnight wind rustling through stalks of wheat or the haunting cry of the ululudhvani , nothing in Bulbbul is what it seems. In posing the savior as an entity of reverence and blasphemy, Dutt also does away with rationale, ushering in layered discourse instead. Her chudail is both a silhouette of fairytale and terror, and Bulbbul emerges triumphant, upending notions of monsters as well as men.

The director reveals she didn’t want to go the route of on-the-nose messaging with Bulbbul . Like a kehanni (storyteller) weaving realities as old as time itself, she imagined the tale drawing people to the bonfire, her psyche opening the doorway to urgent, reimagined retellings. “These are things that move me and therefore they move the story ahead, but at the heart of it, it is just a yarn. If the tale speaks to you, so will the message,” says Dutt. She adds, “I want the shadows to creep closer to you when I tell you the story; I want you to listen attentively. That is all.”

Anvita Dutt
Avinash Tiwary
cinematography
coming of age
Dakshinaranjan Mitra Majumder
Neil Gaiman
neoclassical
netflix india
Parambrata Chattopadhyay
Rabindranath Tagore
Raja Ravi Varma
Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
Siddharth Diwan
Stephen King
supernatural
Terry Pratchett
Thakurmar Jhuli
Tripti Dimri
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Bulbbul Ending Explained & Spoilers: How Did Tripti Dimri’s Movie End?

By Debmitra Chatterjee

Bulbbul , a chilling 2020 Indian horror film directed by Anvita Dutt and produced by Anushka Sharma and Karnesh Ssharma, transports viewers to the intriguing world of the 1880s Bengal Presidency.

The story starts in a small village haunted by a dangerous creature known as a chudail (witch). Through intense flashbacks, viewers witness the life of a child bride, Bulbbul, promised to royalty. The story unfolds to reveal the harsh reality of the village, plagued by sadistic stereotypes among the male population who exploit and oppress women without remorse.

The plot unfolds in the 19th century, following the life of Bulbbul, a 5-year-old married off to Indranil, the Bado Thakur (Elder Lord). She befriends Satya, Indranil’s younger brother, who is closer to her age. Both of them grow up together, playing and telling each other stories of the witch.

They live in a huge mansion along with Indranil’s mentally challenged twin brother Mahendra and his wife, Binodini. With time, as they both grow up, Indranil starts suspecting that Bulbbul has feelings for Satya. He sends Satya away to London, leaving Bulbbul heartbroken about losing her only friend.

Did Bulbbul really die?

Flashbacks reveal how Binodini influenced Indranil into thinking Bulbbul still loves Satya. In a fit of rage, Indranil brutally beats Bulbbul and maims her feet with an iron rod. To worsen it, Mahendra viciously rapes her, resulting in her accidental death. However, she comes back but is not the same anymore. She is resurrected with a mission to help all those oppressed women and serve justice to them. The symbolic transformation marked by the blood-red moon signifies the goddess Kali’s intervention, granting Bulbbul the strength to fight back against injustice.

In the present day, it is shown that Satya returns home from London after twenty years but finds everything to be different. Indranil left the estate, leaving Bulbbul as the head of charge. Mahendra died from what seemed like a witch’s attack. Binodini, his widow, now lives in an outhouse.

Who was the real chudail?

The climax of the film unfolds in a gripping sequence where Satya confronts Sudip, the village doctor. Satya suspects him of the recent murders. As Satya escorts Sudip to Calcutta, the chudail strikes, claiming the carriage driver’s life. Satya, realizing Sudip’s innocence, confronts the witch—Bulbbul—in a moment of chaos.

Bulbbul attempts to escape the fiery turmoil, seeking refuge in a tree as the forest around her ignites. Satya, belatedly recognizing Bulbbul’s true nature, witnesses her demise in the engulfing flames.

In the aftermath, the film leaps to the future, with Indranil returning to his now-deserted estate. Satya left his estate, guilt-ridden about what he did to Bulbbul and also not wanting to become like his brothers. That night, Indranil wakes up and sees Bulbbul’s spirit emerging from the embers. This promises a final act of retribution, suggesting that her quest for justice is far from over.

Bulbbul explores the concept of justice through a supernatural lens, challenging societal norms and expectations. The film’s ending, filled with symbolism and mystique, prompts viewers to reflect on the consequences of abuse and the resilience of those who rise from the ashes.

A self-proclaimed Bollywood enthusiast with a flair for funk and entertainment. She is a gold medalist from TISS and has contributed to different startups looking after their digital marketing section. She has always been an avid reader as well as a curious writer. In her leisure, she loves to spend time with her dogs and binge on organizational videos.

Netflix’s Bulbbul Review — A Feminist Fantasy Or A Feminist Failure?

Trigger warning: mentions of sexual violence

Major spoilers ahead

In recent times, Anushka Sharma’s Clean Slate Films has emerged as an ambassador for producing ‘woke’ content. First she produced NH10 and Pari , both of which were dark thrillers critiquing patriarchy and violence against women. This was followed by Paatal Lok which was a radical commentary on casteism, patriarchy, fake news and the general state of affairs in the country. With Bulbbul , she has come full circle with yet another dark fantasy with loaded social critiques (I think Phillauri is the only light-hearted film in her roster). This is not to suggest that Ms. Sharma’s productions are flawless but she deserves due credit for coming into her own and promoting indie talent in what is a male-dominated and insider-driven industry.

The premise of Bulbbul is as follows: Bulbbul (Tripti Dimri), a child bride in 19 th century Bengal married to the much older Thakur Moshai (Rahul Bose, in his comeback as the crush for all ages), develops an infatuation for her brother-in-law Satyendra (Avinash Tiwary, a sweet reunion for Laila Majnu fans). Satyendra is closer to Bulbbul than her husband both in terms of age and common interests. However, he is predictably sent abroad to study law in England—the colonial equivalent of the prodigal son going to do MBA in the States. He returns home to find that his brother has abandoned Bulbbul, a witch is allegedly hunting down the men of his village and that he is competing with the handsome Doctor Sudip (Parambrata Chatterjee, forever the puppy-faced alternate romantic interest since Kahaani ) for Bulbbul’s affections.

I’ve noticed that on an average, male reviewers have been more critical of the film than female ones. I say on an average, before anybody cherry picks exceptions. The reason for this is apparent once you watch the film. Bulbbul is basically a feminist revenge fantasy. It’s ‘ All Men Are Cancelled ‘ with a touch of folklore horror. Like Maleficient , the movie subverts the patriarchal trope of the ‘witch’ by reimagining the villainess as a wronged woman. I’m not saying men cannot like the film, but it will definitely make a lot of cisgender-heterosexual men uncomfortable.

The entire setting of the film is reminiscent of Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s tales about the Bengali upper-caste housewife, who has a world full of luxuries on the outside but is stifled on the inside. Trapped with a husband who fails to understand her sensitive personality and creative potential, she seeks out affection, and more importantly, understanding in a younger, less overpowering man. The film depicts the horrors of upper caste colonial Bengali patriarchy in full form-including the practice of enforced widowhood. You also see how the need to compete for the affections of the ‘master’ of the household drives women within the joint family to be cruel to each other.

It’s true that the storyline of the film is predictable. You know the moment you see Bulbbul’s smirking, mysterious face when Satyendra returns from London that she is no longer the innocent girl he left behind. You also know why the witch is stalking her victims. The origin of the witch and her exact powers—what does she eat? Is she immortal? What are her weaknesses?—are never explained. Yet any woman watching the film is likely to experience an odd sense of satisfaction in watching the witch hunt her prey.

Where the film really subverts tropes is in its treatment of the dynamic between Bulbbul and Satya. The trailer of the film suggests that Satya is the romantic male lead. It is common in stories featuring the ‘possession’ of a hapless and/or fallen woman for a Satya-like figure to swoop in and ‘save’ the heroine with the ‘redeeming’ power of his love. He ticks off all the checkboxes—he is the handsome, well-educated, cultured babu returned from abroad, and is initially the only man who hasn’t been unkind to the protagonist.

However, you know it’s a red flag when Satya treats Bulbbul’s newly assumed position as the ‘Mistress’ of the house condescendingly, as if she is only playing a game. When he later sees that Bulbbul is openly flirting with her doctor, the inbuilt need to assert his patriarchal authority as the only remaining man in the house openly rears its ugly head. He brings back his widowed sister-in-law into the mansion so that she can keep an eye on Bulbbul, implicitly takes control over the administration of the estate, and chides her for not using a veil in front of the doctor. Subsequently when he, horrors of horrors, sees Bulbbul and the doctor sharing a smoke, he writes to his brother suggesting that Bulbbul be sent back to her maternal home as a punishment. Bulbbul bitterly quips, ‘ You all are the same ’. Satya’s character is a warning to never trust the Woke Bois —they’re the ones who disappoint the most.

Instead, it is the charming Doctor Sudip who appears more sympathetic as a romantic interest. Sudip and Bulbbul’s relationship primarily revolves around him taking care of her feet. The symbolism is subtle—a man who willingly surrenders himself at the feet of a woman is more trustworthy than the rest. This is amplified when we later discover that Bulbbul has been possessed by the spirit of the goddess Kali.

However, what is truly debatable in the film—and here’s where I come to the crux of my critique—is the use of rape as a plot device. Bulbbul’s feet are literally curtailed by her husband when he has a violent fit of jealousy over her affection for Satya. While she lies paralyzed in bed, Bulbbul’s mentally ill brother-in-law rapes her and unintentionally suffocates her to death in the process. In an unexplained turn of mysticism, the heroine is possessed by a spirit from the nearby Kaali temple, leading to her transformation into the ‘witch’.

However, what is truly debatable in the film—and here’s where I come to the crux of my critique—is the use of rape as a plot device. Bulbbul’s feet are literally curtailed by her husband when he has a violent fit of jealousy over her affection for Satya. While she lies paralyzed in bed, Bulbbul’s mentally ill brother-in-law rapes her and unintentionally suffocates her to death in the process. In an unexplained turn of mysticism, the protagonist is possessed by a spirit from the nearby Kaali temple, leading to her transformation into the ‘witch’.

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First of all, the use of the ‘mentally ill sexual predator’ trope is borderline offensive though it is undoubtedly a reality in our country that close relatives rape women and children, and that such crimes are silenced to protect the family ‘honour’. Secondly, to what extent is it necessary to feature a rape scene to make a point about violence against women? The domestic violence perpetrated against Bulbbul was in itself traumatic enough to trigger her ‘transformation’ into an avenging spirit, if such a trigger was required. Why was it necessary to work an extended rape scene into the picture? In such a context, is not using rape as a story point an act of denial?

Finally, in her avatar as the ‘witch’, Bulbbul symbolises the recurring trope of the avenging ‘Kaali Maa’. In a haunting scene, Doctor Sudip corrects Satya on the usage of the word ‘ chudail ’ while referring to her and says that she is actually a devi or goddess. A victim of child sexual abuse who is saved by Bulbbul says the same thing. In the film’s climax, Bulbbul is seemingly burnt to death in a forest fire started by Satya though her apparition re-materializes to haunt Thakur Moshai when he returns home.

The reinforcement of the conservative, carceral rhetoric about rape couldn’t be clearer. Basically rape victims just can’t get a break. They must die or turn psychotic, their rapists must also die and the only way in which their death serves any purpose is to propagate a masculinist culture of carceral punishment/death penalty against men. Of course, in the process they are elevated from being ordinary women to goddesses and role models for the rest of womankind.

It can be argued that in Bulbbul , it is not the State which is carrying out violence but the protagonist herself, and to that extent it is justifiable. In a way, films like Bulbbul act as cultural ‘safety valves’ for women to vent our anger at the patriarchal stronghold over legal and societal institutions. The instant gratification we experience when we see Bulbbul taking revenge distracts us from how in real life, securing their basic liberties is often a frustrating and long-drawn ordeal for most women. In this sense, Bulbbul is far more radical than a Thappad , which is more acceptable to mainstream sensibilities.

Thappad features a virtuous, self-sacrificing, upper middle class protagonist who pursues remedies against domestic violence within acceptable legal limits and with the support and approval of her family, especially her father. Whereas in Bulbbul , the protagonist transgresses boundaries by killing her tormentors, indulging in alcohol, tobacco and other pleasures that were hitherto forbidden to her, and daring to develop feelings for another man. Though the doctor is an ally, she is a completely independent agent. However, unlike Thappad , she doesn’t get the benefit of a happy ending.

Perhaps in this sense, the film can also be compared to the shortcomings of contemporary ‘cancel culture’. Though ‘cancelling’ celebrities for their misconduct might help achieve short-term gains, long-term reforms in due process and strategies for the prevention of sexual assault are yet to be undertaken. Knee-jerk self-righteous angry reactions and call-outs on the internet can never substitute for actual healing and reparations for survivors of sexual assault.

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It makes me wonder, why is it that both films and the popular rhetoric about sexual violence always cast survivors as permanently damaged, and their future as beyond repair?

In Bollywood films, a rape survivor is either an angry embittered witch or an innocent victim who later takes her life. Why is that we don’t have endings like Chapaak for sexual assault survivors? Is it not possible for once to have a climax where the survivor moves forward and forges a new storyline for herself? In Bulbbul , the protagonist’s spirit remains permanently trapped in the haveli . One can hope that in the future, Indian cinema dares to explore more optimistic futures for other Bulbbuls.

Megha Mehta is a legal researcher based in Delhi. If you liked this review you can follow her quips on Twitter or her movie review blog on Instagram .

Featured Image Source: FilmyOne

Megha Mehta is a legal researcher based in Delhi.

I am glad you touched upon the “mentally ill sexual predator” trope. In a society that’s already prejudiced against people with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, it was hard to sit through certain scenes in the film Bulbul because a woman is getting desecrated while also listening to people use words like ‘retarded’ , ‘unstable’, “mental” without ever once stopping to think of the stereotypes being perpetuated.

As it is, in society film viewers do not think of people with disabilities as human beings with certain limitations, who are entitled to human rights like dignity, opportunity, livelihood and education. Filmmakers should think deeply about the impact of the stereotypes they perpetuate in their narratives. The fact that we have segregated schools is a big cause of this deep-rooted prejudice.

I also want to add that in the 1900s, it was much more difficult for most women to be truly happy, considering that she was viewed as property, and this made it hard for her to live life as fully accepted human being. In today’s times it might be possible if one’s parents are supportive, or if they’re not, if we develop the audacity and emotional resilience to embrace one’s full identity devoid of such basic support. #foodforthought

There are a lot of reasons why a rape victim cannot have her life to what it was before the gruesome incident. Indian society would not let the victim forget what happened to her. The Justice system itself takes long time to deliver justice. And in a lot of cases the gangrape or rape is too brutal and barbaric that the victim succumbs or is traumatized for life.

The author just for the sake of writing an article is writing anything without having any empathy whatsoever.

In India when already crimes against women and discrimination is normalized to extreme extents, demanding from the rape victims to live a normal life and wanting the filmmakers to show the victim living a normal life is nothing but inhumanity. Everytime a woman gets raped now she should listen to this new rant that live a normal life, it’s okay, move on, these things happen to women and they move on. Is this what the author wants? This is inhuman.

Only a victim knows the amount of physical pain, mental agony and emotional torture that she goes through when crimes like this happen. It’s a scar which the victim will never get rid of. Someone forcefully having intercourse with a woman is gruesome and asking the woman to let it be and live a normal life.. when there’s nothing normal left for the victim… it’s just disheartening to see such posts on a website about feminism.

Thank you for pointing this out! I was honestly bewildered by the author’s “feminist” arguments regarding rape survivors. “These things happen to women”, “move on”, people (including family of the victim) pretending everything is normal after some time, these are some of the biggest attitude issues of society we’re fighting. This movie showed that the scars are permanent and that they’re not to be brushed off, swept under the carpet. It showed how she tried to rebuild her life, even to hope for better things, with her relationship with her doctor and she wasn’t vilified for it. Moreover, for the time period in which the movie is set, there was no legal recourse for women. So I really don’t understand what the author was arguing for. This entire post was criticism just for the sake of it. The only quibble I had with the movie was the treatment of mental illness. There’s already enough stigma attached to it, we don’t need movies adding more to the pile.

One thing I wanted to ask was, in the end is Bulbbul actually stuck to be in the Haveli for eternity? Because that would be truly unfortunate for someone who deserves more justice but when I saw the ending, I don’t think that’s what happened. What I interpret that after she actually dies from burning in the forest fire, she is actually liberated from a weak physical form and can enact full justice with a better suited supernatural form now and that’s what I think happens. She probably does end up killing Idranil aka the Elder brother aka her husband someway and hopefully continues her ways of saving people from their oppressors in that village in her way of dealing justice. Because honestly just letting her be stuck to the haveli to just haunt a bit would not be a suited ending that the makers would want to give after having her go through all that stuff of showing her awesomeness.

I totally agree with this review, a rape alone cannot define a woman’s entire life, it is a horrible incident but as a society we must make her feel that she is not defined by her vagina, that she is not ‘unpure’ or has been ‘defiled’. Killing yourself or your perpetrator are not the only two options you have, there are people like Sunitha Krishnan, who stand tall and strong. And I totally agree that the domestic violence alone was a brutal trigger, you don’t need to add a 10 min long rape scene to get your point across (whilst fueling horrible prejudices against differently able people, termed in a very unsavoury manner ‘pagal’). And just like women don’t need knights in white horses to rescue them, women don’t need supernatural power to fight their abusers. I was disappointed in this movie as supernatural/horror flick, because it does not fit in the genre, however as a social commentary this film is a notable albeit flawed attempt.

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‘The Strangers: Chapter 1’ Review: Crowded House

A reboot of the 2008 home invasion film “The Strangers” brings back masked assailants and brutal violence but leaves originality behind.

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A man and a woman sit outside a cabin, drinking beers. The woman rests her back on the man's shoulder.

By Erik Piepenburg

The key to a terrific scary home invasion horror movie is not just how domesticity gets breached but why. It’s great to have a determined aggressor, sympathetic victims and a brutal invasion that’s contained and sustained. But to what end?

Yet some of the best home invasion films — “Funny Games,” “Them” — don’t supply easy answers. “The Strangers,” Bryan Bertino’s terrifying 2008 thriller starring Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple under siege, didn’t either. It kept the invaders’ motives and their identities mysterious, amping up the devil-you-don’t-know terrors with a sense of randomness that was despairing. The premise and execution were simple. The payoff was a gut punch.

On its face, “The Strangers: Chapter 1,” the first of three new films in a “Strangers” reboot from the director Renny Harlin (“ A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master ”), checks all the same boxes. But the hapless script — written by Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland and based on the original — offers nothing fresh in a tiring 91 minutes, and nothing daring to justify a new “Strangers” film, let alone a new series, especially when Bertino’s formidable film is streaming on Max .

This new tale begins with Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and her boyfriend, Ryan (Froy Gutierrez), taking a fifth anniversary road trip through the Pacific Northwest. When their car breaks down in a rural Oregon town, they meet a seen-it-before who’s who of horror movie yokeldom: unsmiling boys, sweaty bumpkin mechanics, a diner waitress whose eyes scream “run, if you know what’s good.”

As Maya and Ryan wait for their car to be fixed, they decide to spend the night at a secluded rental cabin. Under darkness there’s a knock at the door and, true to the home invasion formula, our leading sweethearts get terrorized until dawn inside the cabin and through the woods by a trio of assailants with big weapons and indefinite end goals. They have face coverings too, making menace out of the same blank-faced creepiness the villains embodied in the original film and its 2018 sequel.

Harlin is known for action films, including “Die Hard 2,” and those chops come in handy here, especially when he’s left hanging by a sleepy middle section of frantic chases and failed attacks that feel like padding. Cat-and-mouse games can be compelling, but here , like a “Tom and Jerry” marathon, they get repetitive, dulling the impact of the violence. Petsch and Gutierrez have sufficient enough rapport, and border on sharing a couple’s chemistry as the final stretch comes to a too-predictable conclusion.

The film’s few thrilling moments have little to do with blood and guts and more with the juxtaposition of dread and song, as when Joanna Newsom’s lilting hymn “Sprout and the Bean” and Twisted Sister’s power anthem “We’re Not Gonna Take It” pop up unexpectedly to disorient the action. These and other oddball musical interludes provide too-fleeting hints of what might have been had this film sought a novel household takeover, not the same old.

The Strangers: Chapter 1 Rated R for heaps of ruthless violence and general despair. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. In theaters.

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‘The Shrouds’ Review: David Cronenberg Makes a Movie About Grief — and Body Horror, and Digital Gravestones — That in Its Somber Way Verges on Self-Parody

Vincent Cassel plays a kind of Cronenberg surrogate, who is mourning the death of his wife...by watching her corpse through a digital gravestone.

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“How dark do you want to go?” The man asking that is named Karsh ( Vincent Cassel ), and he’s seated in a minimalist art-chic restaurant having lunch with a blind date (though as she points out, how blind can a date be in the age of Google?). The one who’s really asking the question, though, is David Cronenberg, writer-director of “ The Shrouds .” He’s been asking that question — to audiences — for his entire career, and to him the answer has always been the same: The darker the better.

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Starting in the ’90s, his films veered off in a dozen different directions. He made “Naked Lunch”…and “M. Butterfly”…and “A History of Violence”…and “Eastern Promises”…and “A Dangerous Method”…and “Cosmopolis”…as well as a movie that was better than all of them: the insidious psychological puzzle thriller “Spider.” And though moments in those films were touched by Cronenberg’s trademark bio-trauma, with the exception of “Crash” he more or less stayed away from body horror for 20 years.

But now he’s returned to it with an icky vengeance. “Crimes of the Future,” his out-there psychodrama from two years ago, borrowed the title of Cronenberg’s 1970 experimental feature (basically a stasis movie about people lying around leaking fluids out of their mouths), and with its tale of a future in which people grow organs, and the hero turns the surgical harvesting of his own organs into a species of performance art, it aimed to give audiences a Full Cronenberg jolt. “Crimes of the Future” certainly wasn’t boring, but there was something weirdly academic about it. It was a body-horror movie that kept growing new “ideas,” a fantasy that wore its metaphors on its operating gown. When I reviewed it out of Cannes , I had very mixed feelings, and I think that’s where most of the world landed. (The film grossed a worldwide total of $4.5 million.)

But with “The Shrouds,” Cronenberg is tripling down on body horror. He’s 81 now, and this may be his way of saying that he’s not going to go gentle into that good night. He wants to rev things up with a squishy bang. I wish I could say the result was powerful, but the strange conundrum of Cronenberg’s recent movies is that the more obsessed he becomes with the body, the more he seems to lead from the head. “The Shrouds” could almost be a “Saturday Night Live” parody of Cronenberg. The movie is about love and death and cancer and conspiracy and hallucinations and God knows what else. Every time it adds a new element, the film seems to be asking, “How dark do you want to go?” But is this a drama or a contest?

Karsh started GraveTech, his futuristic voyeuristic gravestone company, out of a desire to remain with his wife. He says, “It has drained away that fluid of grief that was drowning me.” But who, if I may ask, does Cronenberg think is going to identify with that? Maybe the same people who watched “Crash” and thought that being maimed in car accidents is sexy. The trouble with these ideas isn’t that they’re too extreme — it’s that they’re borderline absurd.

The film’s co-star, Diane Kruger , plays several roles, notably Karsh’s late wife (seen in flashback) and her snappish veterinarian-turned-dog-groomer sister. They’re both women of force, and Kruger allows herself to go all the way with Cronenberg’s conceits, letting her nudity be used as a kind of canvas on which he can scrawl his drama of damage. There’s another character, Soo-Min (Sandrine Holt), who becomes fused in Karsh’s imagination with his wife, as if the film were trying to be “Persona” crossed with “The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.” As “The Shrouds” goes on, it becomes more earnest and more nutty. I think Cronenberg thinks he’s making movies that audiences will experience as feature-length versions of his own dreams. Here’s the difference: When you’re in a dream, you believe what’s happening.

Reviewed at Digital Arts (Cannes Film Festival, In Competition), May 8, 2024. Running time: 119 MIN.

Production: A Prospero Pictures, SBS Productions, Saint Laurent Productions production. Producers: Saïd Ben Saïd, Martin Katz, Anthony Vaccarello. Executive producers: Kevin Chneiweiss, Kateryna Merkt, Marieke Tricoire, Charles Tremblay, Ariane Giroux-Dallaire.
Crew: Director, screenplay: David Cronenberg. Camera: Douglas Koch. Editor: Christopher Donaldson. Music: Howard Shore.
With: Vincent Cassel, Diane Kruger, Guy Pearce, Sandrine Holt, Elizabeth Saunders, Jennifer Dale, Eric Weinthal.

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‘The Substance’ Review: Demi Moore And Margaret Qualley Pair Up For The Year’s Smartest, Goriest Horror Breakout – Cannes Film Festival

By Damon Wise

Film Editor, Awards

Demi Moore’s ‘The Substance’ World Premiere Gets A 13-Minute Ovation At Cannes

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Demi Moore Talks Role In Taylor Sheridan’s ‘Landman’ & Confirms Second Season Ahead Of Cannes Official Selection Debut In ‘The Substance’

Moore plays Elisabeth Sparkle, a big movie star in the ’80s who now runs a fitness show called Sparkle Your Life on morning television. Like Jane Fonda, she encourages viewers to feel the burn, ending her show with a wink and a catchphrase (“Take care of yourself!”). What she doesn’t know is that the show’s producer ( Dennis Quaid ), a monstrous vulgarian who may or may not be coincidentally called Harvey, wants Elisabeth out, chiefly for the crime of being over 50. Elisabeth finds this out the hard way when she overhears him calling his assistant to find a replacement. “I want her young, I want her hot, and I want her NOW!” he bawls.

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“It,” according to the promo material, is The Substance, which, with tubes and syringes and whatnot, will turn out to be quite a process. But the gist of it, presaged at the beginning of the film with an egg yolk, is that The Substance will create “a new you.” The only catch — which in the spirit of cautionary tales seems so simple and yet will prove so hard to adhere to — is that you must share your time: “One week for you. One week for the new you. Seven days each.”

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Elisabeth throws the flash drive in the trash, but after seeing her old job advertised in the newspaper, she pulls it out and calls the number. She gets an address, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, and a key pass emblazoned with the number 503. Although no money ever seems to change hands, Elisabeth is up and running when she takes possession of a cardboard box filled with liquids and arcane medical ephemera, emblazoned with words like “Activate,” “Stabilize” and “Switch.” At home, she strips off and jacks up a neon-yellow serum.

Which is where the fun starts.

After a hallucinogenic homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey , Elisabeth gives birth to Sue (Qualley), a pretty young woman who, at first sight, seems a little too wholesome to fill Elisabeth’s shoes. But after an audition for Harvey’s team, Sue gets the job and starts breaking ratings records with a highly sexualized new show called Pump It Up . She starts getting high on fame and breaks the seven-day rule of The Substance, which, physically, takes its toll on Elisabeth. Soon, the two women are embroiled in a battle of wits that can only end in disaster.

And it does.

Fargeat’s first film, Revenge , was a blood-spattered rape-payback movie that, despite its much more down-to-earth setting, required a similar suspension of disbelief. Admirers of that film will easily see her signature tones here; after red, which will eventually spray-paint the entire screen, orange is her go-to color, with a bit of sky-blue here and there. Once again, the music confronts you like a rabid sniffer dog, and there is a fascination for naked human skin that Moore and Qualley quite selflessly oblige, in ways that are never gratuitous.

It’s interesting to notice that, at 61, Moore is actually older that both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford were when they made Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? , the film that kickstarted the hagsploitation cycle of horror films in 1962 and which casts a long shadow over The Substance , especially when tensions between Elisabeth and Sue boil over. Needless to say, Moore still looks amazing, but Fargeat’s film is not about that, it’s about the way Elisabeth allows the male gaze to objectify and belittle her, only to find that the supposedly “better” version of herself has the same insecurities and more of ’em, all dialed up to 11.

Title: The Substance Festival: Cannes (Competition) Director-screenwriter: Coralie Fargeat Cast: Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid Sales agent: Cinetic Media Running time: 2 hr 20 min

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