Adhura Review – Promising Plot Stretched Lamentably
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
In its very first episode, “Adhura” sets up the entire plot, and by the second episode, the direction becomes painfully obvious. Despite this, the potentially intriguing horror-thriller drags on for a cumbersome seven episodes, leaving viewers wondering why.
Created by Ananya Banerjee and Gauravv K. Chawla in 2023, the series falls into the growing sub-genre of boarding school thrillers, exploring themes similar to the mini-series “School of Lies” but with the added twist of the supernatural. The story revolves around ten-year-old protagonist Vedant, portrayed by Shrenik Arora, who endures bullying from his peers until a potentially sinister spirit comes to his rescue. Soon, Vedant begins to spook students, prompting concern from the headmaster about the upcoming two-day reunion celebration for the batch of 2007. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the alumni have a connection with the ghost possessing the young boy.
With 45-minute-long episodes, “Adhura,” meaning “incomplete,” suffers from being overstretched, constantly shifting between the present and events from 2007 involving former students attending the reunion. Many scenes are unnecessarily repeated, and an excessive use of slow-motion shots only adds to the tedium. Although the setting in a lavish boarding school in the picturesque hill station of Ooty provides visually pleasing cinematography, the dimly lit shots meant to create an ominous atmosphere fail to evoke any scares and instead become annoying.
While the first few episodes unfold more like a psychological thriller, it’s as if suddenly the makers wake up and realise there should be more supernatural elements and go overboard with ghosts, deaths, and possession towards the ending. Through the runtime, my mother kept falling asleep, dad conveniently scrolled through memes on his phone whenever he felt like, my 19-year-old cousin brother simply walked out by episode 6 and I was the only potato watching it all, prohibited from fast-forwarding anything. Clearly not a great pick for family night.
Ishwak Singh portrays Adhiraj Jaisingh, a 2007 alumnus settled in the USA, who attends the high-school reunion in hopes of reuniting with his estranged best friend, Ninad Raman (Poojan Chhabra), from the same year. Rasika Dugal plays the school counselor, Supriya, who attempts to help Vedant but unintentionally projects her own trauma-related issues onto the boy. Despite Shrenik Arora’s endearing performance in a short cameo in “The Night Manager,” his character in “Adhura” lacks depth and comes across as generic—a scared and bullied boy lacking personality. In fact, all the characters in the series suffer from one-dimensional personalities. Jaimini Pathak as the condescending superstitious Hindi teacher Chandra Prakash turned out to be the most entertaining supporting character, despite his cliched lines.
Instead of wasting time in scenes where a character is doing nothing but walking towards a door for almost twenty seconds, the creators should’ve spent more time on character development. And if they didn’t want the flaws to start showing, this should’ve been a 5-episode long show at best, if not shorter. A really ridiculous plot twist involving Supriya, the counselor, completely ruins any semblance of satisfaction one could’ve drawn from the ending of the primary ghost story.
It’s a 4 on 10 from me. The series is available on Prime Video.
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