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.
If message movies actually affected the way a country thinks, The Vvaan would push India 200 years back. In terms of the premise, Ram Setu crawled so that The Vvaan could fly into a wall. It revolves around a modern atheist named Rishi (Sidharth Malhotra) who scoffs at traditions and rituals and god-fearing ways because his wife (Tamannaah Bhatia) had a pregnancy accident while worshipping the Vaan-devi (forest goddess) years ago. They’re a childless couple craving for a baby. In case you’re wondering (but why?), the wife’s name is ‘Mamta’ (maternal love). Rishi applies for a loan for IVF treatment, never mind that they’re living in a sea-facing Mumbai apartment. Fate brings them back to his ancestral home in Purvanchal: now the residence of his brother (Anup Soni), who promises him money for a land acquisition deal. There’s some sexual tension with Rishi’s sister-in-law, but it turns out to be textual tension; he blames her devoutness for Mamta’s accident. But the village traces the outskirts of a jungle that has one centuries-old rule: do not enter after dark. The locals are also in a tizzy about a road that might be built through their holy forest.
You know how it goes. Rationalist Rishi mocks everyone for putting divinity over development, and religion over science; his transformation (the moment he rhymes “shakti” with “bhakti” against an AI-generated sky) is inevitable. Ironically, back in the city, he was actually speaking sense as a self-made protagonist, but the story believes that he is in dire need of an intervention. It goes to great lengths to embarrass itself and teach Rishi a lesson: believe in god and miracles and family inheritance you naughty boy, do not run after money and jobs. A journalist who decides to expose this hokey forest thing, needless to mention, meets a gory end. For a movie that shames capitalism and progress in favour of blind faith, irony dies (no, it becomes one with the soil and grows trees) when every cooking scene features brand-placement shots of Fortune Oil. It’s an old TVF habit, and it’s almost comforting to see the total lack of self-awareness.
There’s also the hero’s bestie (it’s always Maniesh Paul), the comic-relief vlogger who gets stuck in the loop of juvenile gag featuring an old woman acting like a witch; some of us had a sharper sense of humour in pre-school. The script pretends to be environmentally conscious, because the villagers are against the destruction of trees, but they’re really only petrified of pissing off their Goddess and displacing her temple. Even social commentary is a red herring. There’s the pragmatic local, Deepak (Sunil Grover), who is in favour of development because his father allegedly died when there was no route to reach the hospital after sunset. But he is too noble to be true. There’s also a pixellated tiger…never mind.
Not a single performer looks remotely capable of buying into the philosophy; every line and woeful expression seems to be delivered seconds after stepping out of air-purified vanity vans with customised gyms. If I were any of them — especially the cosplay-in-crisis-stricken hero — I’d secretly omit this title from my filmography when nobody’s looking (along with Marjaavaan). At one point, Rishi-boy saves a panicked bull in an impressively incoherent set-piece in the dark forest, so that said bull can pay back the favour in the climax and they can kiss. If only the bull had an upset stomach, I could get away with using a slur and feigning plausible deniability.
You can tell that the makers (of shows like Panchayat) cannot handle scale, dizzying budgets and visual ambition any more than I can. I’ve stumbled out of bars and had drunken hallucinations that boast of better VFX than the showreels in The Vvaan. I’ve seen ghouls of my conscience and spirits with texture — and the rum wasn’t even real. If you so much as look away from the screen and dream of a better life, a bhajan or prayer starts to play during action sequences. Animation stretches provide the folklore behind the forest, and somehow they look more live-action than the live-action figures. Characters narrate their emotions and intentions to nobody in particular; the top-angle shots of the jungle resemble close-ups of raw fennel (saunf).
It takes an interesting cocktail of audacity and delusion to use film-making as a scapegoat to showcase whatever this is. It’s not the first Indian movie to dunk on pragmatists to make its point about sacrament and heritage; it’s just the worst-crafted of the lot. Rishi’s awakening happens when his newly-drowned wife comes back to life during a Chhath Pooja accident. Since it’s a film that’s not hypocritical at all, I expected a crocodile to rescue her and Lacoste to be sponsoring Rishi’s casual attire. No such luck. I sound exactly like the kind of blasphemous non-believer who’d die a gruesome death in the story at the paws of a vegetarian tiger. And I’m not even a proper journalist.