‘Maa’ review: A feeble and dull battle between mothers and monsters

Forty years ago, a girl was born in a landlord’s family in Chandarpur village in Bengal. The girl was immediately sent to her death – the landlord was steeped in Kali worship and believed that the girl infant must be sacrificed if Kali’s adversary, the demigod Raktabeej, was to be vanquished.

In the present, the landlord’s son Shubhankar (Indraneil Sengupta) has a mysterious accident while visiting his ancestral mansion. Shubhankar and his wife Ambika (Kajol) have avoided visiting Chandarpur for years. They especially don’t want to take their 12-year-old daughter Shweta (Jherin Sharma) there.

Yet, here are Ambika and Shweta in Chandarpur, fulfilling the first rule of the horror film formula: the lead characters will walk resolutely towards peril, ignoring every warning sign. Ambika finds herself battling a manifestation of a demonic force that has ghastly designs on Shweta and the other girls in the village.

The problem with Maa isn’t Ambika’s unreasonable actions – irrationality is a cornerstone of horror. Rather, the trouble with Vishal Furia’s movie is how literal-minded and feeble it turns out to be.

For a film about a potent and fierce goddess, Maa is a resolutely tame affair. Like Ambika, Maa too is constantly looking for miracles – a tough ask, given Saiwyn Quadras’s plodding screenplay, a barely...

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