Stree 2 Review: Passable, Decent Outing to the Prequel

Rating – 2.75/5
Cast: Sharddha Kapoor, Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee, Tammanah Bhatia
Director: Amar Kaushik
Produced By: Dinesh Vijayan, Jyoti Deshpande
Release Date: 15th August, 2024

Starring Rajkumar Rao and Shraddha Kapoor in lead roles, directed by Amar Kaushik while written by Niten Bhatt and music composed by Justin Varghese and Sachin-Jigar.

Story:
After the events of Stree, the town of Chanderi is being haunted again. This time, women are mysteriously abducted by a terrifying headless entity. Once again, it’s up to Vicky ( Rajkumar Rao ) and his friends to save their Chanderi and loved ones.

Performances:
Rajkumar Rao as Bicky has done commendable job in anchoring the film throughout with being the small town lover boy cum the village saviour for the film. He piloted through the whole film with good comic – timing along with his friends played by Aparadhakti Khurana ( Bittu ), Pankaj Tripathi ( Rudra ) and Abhishek Banerjee as Jaanu. Shraddha Kapoor has been phenomenal with ability to show the mystery around her character very well. Bittu, Rudra and Jaanu trio stand out with savouring the film with their crazy comic timing and jokes throughout the film.

Analysis:While in comparison with the first part, the horror element is toned down but the comedy in the film has been too good and at one point of time, the plot of the film works as a satire mirroring the real world. The VFX truly stands out and has to be one of the best work done by Maddock team in Indian cinema and the best part being that, they haven’t gone for a 3D version that would have the loose the visual impact of this VFX enriched scenes in the film. The writing has got a lot of inner depth within with trying to question the strong stereotypes and breaking the myths that we see in our society. When matriarchy dies, misogyny is born and later the plot revolves around this consequences of misogyny on the town of Chanderi. The first half starts on an interesting establishing the plot with good comic relief around and sprinkles of horror here and there but the problem lies in with the second half when the horror tonality doesn’t get the much needed punch and satisfy the title – Sarkate Ka Aatank where the aatank ( terror ) isn’t at all hard despite just ends up being funny and mysteriously Bollywoodish cliche type in a harry potterish way.

Verdict:
Stree 2 is a decently very good sequel to the first part but hangs on to be that very less intense than the first part. Kudos to the makers for funding and working on such scripts based on Indian- folklore stories and giving a bigger platform with amazing VFX too. Overall Stree 2 is a great watch especially if you’re someone who loves to watch comedy-horror films and do give a try for this weekend too.