The film stars Bipasha Basu, Dino Morea and Malini Sharma in lead roles. 'secret') is a 2002 Indian supernatural horror film directed by Vikram Bhatt. It’s definitely smart filmmaking, something that doesn’t spoon feed the audience.Raaz ( lit. These semantics are not supposed to give you a jolt but to make you look beyond the obvious. These metaphors hold meanings and make Sherni a well-crafted film. Then there is another one where Sharat Saxena is making a joke about tiger in a drunk state. It seems like the deer’s horns are actually his crown. There’s a scene in the film when Bansal, who is very fond of holding his own ‘darbar’ inside his office, is standing in front of a stuffed swamp deer’s head.

They have shed their usual Bollywood image and gotten into the skin of the characters.

Vidya Balan, Brijendra Kala, Vijay Raaz, Sharat Saxena and Neeraj Kabi, all primary characters are in top form. That way, it deals with moral corruption and how it impacts decision making in crucial conditions. Rather it’s more about treating wildlife as an inferior species. It’s not the obvious kind of corruption we witness in Bollywood films.

On top of it, local politicians want to use tiger as a trophy of their guarantee to villagers’ protection.Īdd a dose of subtle humour to the proceedings and you have a smooth story at your hands. It’s indeed a complex tale-the government wants to save the tigers, the villagers want to use jungles for daily resources and the tigers need a fearless habitat. Like a fly on the wall experience, you see Vidya Vincent navigating through tough terrains only to reach nowhere.

In fact, this is how the narrative of Sherni compels us to take every character seriously. Their means and methods might be different but their intentions are certainly not black. Aastha Tiku’s superb screenplay is full of sarcastic comments on the functioning of administration and local politicians but they all seem to be doing what they think is right for the local public at that point of time. Just like Newton, there are no villains here either. Then there are local politicians and other forest department officers who don’t want to lose their grip over the issue because it may prove beneficial during the elections. One of them is Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan), a strict DFO, whose clueless boss Bansal (Brijendra Kala) wants to get the man eater killed with the help of a local hunter Pintu Bhaiyya (Sharat Saxena).

Rohit raaz