Director Amar Kaushik has this knack for skillfully placing a slice of social commentary between loaves of fantasy and comedy, with the messenger being a social outlier. In Stree, his debut feature, it was a witch who inverted the gender dynamics of a village. In Bhediya, it is a werewolf whose dogged approach leaves us with an important lesson on saving the environment and preventing a pandemic. Told in a popular idiom that extracts willful suspension of disbelief, Bhediya has enough bite for those who believe in the power of parables.
Bhaskar (Varun Dhawan) is an upcoming building contractor who is hired by a big shark (Saurabh Shukla) to clear the forest of Arunachal Pradesh, to build a road by selling the development narrative to the locals. On a full moon night, Bhaskar gets bitten by a wolf and turns overnight into a shape-shifting creature. It leads to a riveting conundrum. The animal in him wants to save the forest, while the man in him — for whom nature is the flowerpot on the balcony and the animal is the pet dog of his boss — is keen to turn Ziro into a profitable venture.
Writer Niren Bhatt explores the fun side of fables and punctuates the storyline with the ironies that life throws at us. Set in the North East, beneath the frolic, there is a timely debate on who is the outsider and the idea of purity of language.
Before the critics could point out the reference points, the characters themselves discuss the Bollywood legacy of shape-shifting creatures. The humour is situational and emanates from the practical difficulties of being a werewolf. How should a vegan behave when he discovers that he is half-animal? How should his friends address his concerns? The jokes keep the narrative moving up the hill.
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