‘Student of the Year: After Dark’ review: A frozen corpse thaws into silliness

The film Student of the Year, best known for launching the careers of Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan and Sidharth Malhotra in 2012, yielded a sequel in 2019. It has now spawned a web series. Student of the Year: After Dark badly wants to be edgy, gruesome and socially relevant, a high-stakes battle between youngsters who want more than winning dance contests and acing quizzes.

The six-episode Hindi series is out on JioHotstar. The setting is the elite, snooty and mercifully fictitious St Teresa’s College. A bunch of students prowls its corridors after hours, participating in a deadly competition being conducted by a person hidden behind a screen and volunteers wearing wolf-faced masks.

One of the participants is Aditi (Shanaya Kapoor), who is investigating the death of her identical twin Aayesha. Found at the bottom of a frozen lake, St Theresa’s resident queen bee now lies on a slab in a mortuary, waiting to be thawed.

Aditi takes her sister’s place at St Theresa – don’t ask how – and starts going down a list of suspects whose names appear on the screen in crimson-hued text. The boyfriend Sid (Divik Sharma), the admirer Rehaan (Abhinav Singh), the bestie Tara (Manya Grover), Tara’s boyfriend Jay-D (Adi Malik) and the roommate Babydoll (Deeya...

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