The Vvaan: Force of the Forest

What happens when the custodians of ecological preservation form a corrupt alliance with political forces in the name of progress? Arunabh Kumar and Ekta Kapoor combine to present the dialectic between ecological conservation and modernisation, wrapped in a glossy, high-pitched divine intervention, for a mass audience that, these days, looks South for grand mytho-mystical experiences. When Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra), a rational professional, returns to his ancestral village with his wife Mamta (Tamannaah Bhatia) to sell off his inherited land, he is sucked into a raging debate. Led by the double-faced Deepak (Sunil Grover), those aligned with the development agenda offer a better rate because they want to build a road through the forest to reduce travel time to city infrastructure. In contrast, the traditionalists, including his well-meaning brother Shashi (Anup Soni) and bitter sister-in-law (Shweta Tiwari), don’t want to upset the forest’s reigning deity and invite her curse. Because of a past incident, Rishi has lost faith in the goddess, but Mamta remains devoted. When Rishi ignores the sacred decree forbidding entry into the forest after sunset, fury breaks loose as we gradually discover that beneath the supernatural lies a timely message: reneging on a pact with nature can unleash self-seeking dark forces. Drawing from folklore, it reminds us that the ruler has a role to protect nature and what happens when the custodian goes corrupt.

Some films are bad. Some are terrible. And some are pure torture. The Vvaan falls neatly into that third category, in which I struggled to find a single redeeming feature, and failed spectacularly. When we first come upon a Mumbai-based engineer (Sidharth Malhotra) and his wife (Tamannaah Bhatia), childless but certainly not loveless, they are a) singing songs in a large sea-side bungalow, b) fetching up at a quack who hands out potency powders and c) participating in a hideous racist-colourist joke. The Vvaan never recovers from this early blow. Nor did I, as the film kept drawing me deeper into an off-colour, off-putting mix of so-called fantasy and folklore, of the kind that involves dark forests and their resident guardian devis, and evil spirits which devour those who dare walk into their domain after dark.

Questioning folklore is guaranteed to wreak havoc in stories built around legends and myths. Stepping inside a cursed forest on a full moon night despite repeated warnings from villagers turned Rahul Roy into a tiger, late night strolls during an annual four-day festival spelled sure-shot doom for the male residents of Chanderi in Stree when abducted by its titular bhootni. In the erroneously spelled The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest, Sidharth Malhotra as the sceptic Rishi scoffs at the forbidden forest mythology threatening folks with dire consequences should they dare step inside the woods after sunset and stir the peace of its esteemed Van Devi mata. Until he knows better.

I’ve reviewed thousands of Hindi films over the years, so I don’t say this lightly: The Vvaan: Force of the Forrest is one of the foremost painful experiences I’ve had in a cinema hall. There are times I looked around to confirm that this was indeed a legitimate screening, and I was indeed awake — and alive. The liberal desecration of language in the title (Vvaan, Forrest) for astrological reasons is a warning that the stars have forsaken us. Because The Vvaan is a 136-minute-long devotional video (composed with Windows 1997 tools) masquerading as a movie. It’s a K-serial on cheat day, a Zee Horror Show imposter on memory-loss medicines, a mythological fantasy on a fake witchcraft internship, and last of all, an insincere and soulless Bollywood production that becomes a ghastly parody of itself.

The eponymous forest - it has been in existence since the 7th century, the audience is told in a rushed introduction - has a human voice. It emanates from a goddess carved in stone. The rock deity has eyes that glow in the dark like traffic lights. Only those who dare to venture into the forbidden, mystical woods at night witness the phenomenon but only a few survive to tell the tale. It is deep-rooted fear of the unknown that keeps people away from the forest after sunset. In the climax, a crowd divided by what they know or what they don’t congregates there. A protracted fracas erupts. The skirmish is of the sort that leaves one completely cold.