MAINSTREAM HINDI CINEMA is a lot of things except audacious. The space is so heavily dictated by commerce that there is no narrative, only patterns. It takes one film to work for ten others to be made in the same mould. Consider last year when a series of tentpole ventures were bankrolled due to the success of one. In mainstream Hindi cinema, creative stakes are so low that ambition here goes to die. Which is why it is a marvel that something like Stree 2 exists, or more specifically a filmmaker like Amar Kaushik does. 

The four-film director has had a staggering arc and displayed more gumption than most of his contemporaries. His feature debut Stree renewed the horror-comedy genre and started a multiverse shared by humans, animals and spirits, and espoused social commentary. It is a tricky combination that bore uneven results: Stree (2021) and Bhediya (2023; both by Kaushik) were inventive, Munjya (dir: Aditya Sarpotdar; 2024) was chalky. But the consistent triumph of the franchise (Bhediya occupying the third rung) inadvertently implies, in commercial terms, more reiteration and less pluck.

On one hand, Stree 2 complies. The narrative progression, though fun, is familiar. The setting is still Chanderi and the walls still have that ominous message painted on it, “O Stree kal aana”. This, of course, refers to the time, not too far back, when the men in the town were haunted by a female spirit (Stree), as part of her revenge for being killed on her wedding day. Last time we were privy to the place, a ladies' tailor, Vicky (Rajkummar Rao continues to be in fine form) and his friends, Jana (Abhishek Banerjee acing his reaction shots) and Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana), along with a local librarian Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) and a mysterious girl (Shraddha Kapoor) had saved Chanderi. They had taken away Stree’s power but she left when offered respect. 

With a sequel in place, the conceit is quite blatantly reversed. If the first film insisted on an interesting play on gender dynamic where a female ghost alluringly calls men (seeking consent) and holds them hostage once they turn back, the second part resets it. This time, the horror consists of a headless male spirit (‘Sarkata”), an erstwhile hedonistic patriarch in Chanderi who was killed by Stree. Now with her gone, he has returned to take revenge on women, especially those who are modern. Sarkata is powerful, heinous and vengeful with no regard for permission. Unlike what had happened before, it is men who can now walk home alone at night.  

Written by Niren Bhatt (Raj & DK are absent but feature in credits for the first film), Stree 2 unfolds visibly attuned to what had worked the first time. Jokes come every five seconds – most land, some don’t (there is a hilarious moment, however, when Rao’s Vicky listens to music and rolls his tongue over all the English words in Rema and Selena Gomez’s 'Calm Down' only to assuredly halt at the refrain). There is a Neha Kakkar reference snuck in, Sarkata is compared to an influencer and the famous Aadhar card quip is replaced by one on GST. 

Even the dynamic among the characters is more of a repetition. Vicky is lovesick and when his unnamed lover arrives (Kapoor gets an orchestrated hero-entry right when, sneakily, the men hide behind a bangles shop), things unravel in a familiar beat. His friends make fun of him till they don’t. Jana, still the innocent punching bag, is fetched from Delhi when Bittu’s ‘social’ girlfriend is taken away. The first half of Stree 2, though consistently watchable, spends too long on jump scares and reflecting on past glory. Its existence feels more like compliance with box-office diktats. 

But the allure of Kaushik’s new film is that it is both a fan service and a creative exercise, it is both a reiteration and an invention. It is a convincing foray into the multiverse (all the references are tied in neatly) and equally robust as a distinct film. It is an unrequited love story, funny in how tragic it is, and a moving tale of a daughter fighting for her mother’s freedom. Humour becomes both its doing and undoing. A beta man is propped up as the saviour even when it is the women (and an animal) who are doing most of the heavy-lifting. 

The narrative is steeped in making commentaries and yet the most moving scenes in the film are scored to a wrenching orchestra (Justin Varghese of Joji fame has furnished the background music) that feels utterly disconnected and yet fully clued in the proceedings. In what will probably be the most visually spectacular climax of this year, jokes are force-fitted to ease the dramatic undertones. Stree 2 is a constant negotiation of the filmmaker doing what he wants to do while sneaking in what he knows are the wants of his film. 

What leaks from here is an instance of visceral ambition. Kaushik takes his chances (like he did with Bhediya) and then swings for the fences. The last 40 minutes of Stree 2 is more poignant than many outings this year and all of it is achieved with spirits and creatures at the forefront and human beings in the background. The horror-comedy multiverse shares a dedicatedly effective VFX but in Stree 2 it becomes the language and the medium. The visual design is what the film chooses to communicate without abandoning a kernel of emotion. The dependence is outright plucky given how frequently Hindi films have crashed due to this (here’s looking at you, Brahmāstra) but Stree 2 is nothing if not ambitious.

It feels surreal to be watching and writing about a film like this at a time like this. In Stree 2, both the humour and the horror are built into the premise: an alcohol-loving, headless patriarch resurfaces to avenge women who exercise freedom in their lives. There is incredulity here (“Who does that?”) and apprehension (“Would men do that?”). How persisting is the misogyny, how deep? On August 9, a female doctor in Kolkata was brutally raped at her workplace. The details of the incident are horrid and unwritable. If there was a question in Kaushik’s film, the answer has presented itself. But there is also hope in the way things transpired later, in both fiction and reality. Women unbolted doors and took to the streets; they walked home at night in Chanderi and different parts of India. After all, as Stree 2 underscored: if misogyny is eternal then resistance is universal. 

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