'Subham' Movie Review: A Fresh But Slightly Simplistic Feminist Horror

Director: Praveen Kandregula
Writer: Vasanth Maringanti
Cast: Harshith Reddy, Gavireddy Srinivas, Charan Peri, Shriya Kontham,  Shravani Lakshmi, Shalini Kondepudi, Vamshidhar Goud
Language: Telugu

The makers of Netflix darling Cinema Bandi (2021) return to tell the story of yet another small town populated with inherently good people in Subham. The film takes us to simpler days of the early 2000s —a time when cable still reigns over the television sets of every household, where sharing a bottle of 7-Up with two straws constitutes romance, and a time where friendships are easy and forgiving. But of course, the time also comes with its own antiquated beliefs on gender roles, an idea that director Praveen Kandregula and writer Vasanth Maringanti dissect and critique through the lens of horror. The critique is mostly effective, even if its hold over the genre isn’t.

Subham might initially give us the idea of having a very conformist plot. It does after all, revolve around three men (Harshith Reddy, Gavireddy Srinivas and Charan Peri) who lose it when their wives (Shriya Kontham, Shravani Lakshmi and Shalini Kondepudi) begin showing signs of hysteria at 9 pm every night, when a plodding but popular serial begins to air on their television sets. Is it a ghost? Or is it just a "hysterical woman" who doesn’t want to be disturbed during serial time? But refreshingly, Subham doesn’t spend all its time riffing off the "crazy woman" stereotype. In fact, the film wants nothing to do with the easy laughs that could’ve very easily come out of the bad idea. It instead spends some time connecting the plight of the woman on television with the angst of the women watching from the outside.

As the men (led by a sincere Reddy) scramble to find the connection and rid their wives of their fate, we’re provided with ample laughs. The film also shows us the different kinds of masculinity these husbands project, in decreasing order of toxicity. If one demands a coffee to be given to his hand, there is another who is happy to make his own cup. Conversations of being an "alpha male" vs "beta male" overflow in the film, but are given the appropriate treatment, and never once trivialised. 

Maringanti and Kandregula write men for what they are, pulling them up for their behaviour, either through their writing or through timely comedy. This works best in the scenes between newlyweds played by Reddy and Shriya Kontham, who share a lovely romance that’s almost instant. Laughs flow when she tries to hide the fact that she’s an alpha and he tries harder to keep his inner beta from slipping out. But this level of detail isn’t paid to the other two couples, whose stories are ultimately forgettable.

But the film’s biggest setback is not in its writing of characters, but in its staging of horror. While Subham wants to stay in the zone of Stree (2018), Amar Kaushik’s irresistible mishmash of horror and comedy, the film struggles to evoke any dread. We get routine shots of the blue-faced women, bursting an artery and furiously moving bed posts every time the clock strikes 9, but where is the tension? The writing in these bits needed a lighter but sharper hand. So, eventually as the film runs its course on its interesting premise by the 45th minute, things start slowing down, the comedy — and eventually its take on gender roles — becomes simplistic, and we’re left wanting to feel the same freshness we were initially made to feel.

The eerie connection between the women on and off television itself lends itself to such original, madcap material. Add to it a hilarious battle between team cable and team DTH (Reddy’s character plays a cable operator who has his own appropriately named nemesis: DISH Kumar), and it’s understandable why actor Samantha Ruth Prabhu wanted to present Subham as Tralala’s debut production. The ideas are wacky and its heart is in the right place. Even if the genre isn't always.