Kajol Can’t Save Maa From a Weak NarrativeFronted solidly by Kajol in the guise of a woman who fights fiercely to prevent her daughter from falling prey to an old curse that hangs over the family and their village, Maa is a confused concoction. Faith, fear and feudalism flow into a feminine fable both fantastical and feeble.
The mythological drama pans out in a remote Bengal village – its name is a Punjabified ‘Chandarpur’ and not ‘Chandrapur’ as it would be pronounced and spelled by a Bengali – off a forest that nobody dares to enter.
That is pretty much the fate of Maa, helmed by Vishal Furia, whose fame rests on the 2016 Marathi horror flick Lapachhapi (remade in Hindi as Chhori by the director himself). It is way too erratic to be aware where it is going.
Maa forgets what it wants to be – a straight up horror movie or a mish-mash of many things ranging from a good-versus-evil tale to a celebration of a benign, doting mother’s power to be destructive when her child is threatened by a force she can barely comprehend.
The killing of the girl unleashes a curse that casts a shadow on all young village girls on the cusp of adulthood. They are hounded by a daitya (demon), a personification of a fearsome giant tree that spreads terror around the zamindar’s mansion that is now up for sale.
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