Konkona Sen Sharma's left eye does this slight, predatory twitch when she pours tea in the first act of Ek Thi Daayan, and honestly, that detail alone carries more actual dread than three decades of standard-issue Bollywood horror tropes combined. The film wants us to take its grand mythology of occult bloodlines seriously, but it works best during these small, domestic tremors where a mother buttering toast feels like she might accidentally sever a thumb instead. Kannan Iyer directs with a strange, nervous energy that keeps dropping the supernatural stuff for long stretches of interpersonal awkwardness, which is usually where Hindi films lose their nerve and reach for a comedy track or a song. Instead, the screenplay—co-written by Vishal Bhardwaj, whose fingerprints are all over the cynical, dusty texture of the suburban apartment complexes—keeps the focus tight on the psychology of a famous magician who can no longer tell if his childhood trauma is a hallucination or an ongoing conspiracy involving women with backward-facing feet. It is a messy setup that takes its time getting going, though if I'm honest, the middle forty minutes drag so badly you could check your phone, order groceries, and come back to find Emraan Hashmi still looking vaguely concerned in a grey blazer.

Hashmi plays Bobo, a stage illusionist whose life is falling apart because he believes a mythological creature from his boarding school days has followed him into adult high-rise Mumbai. He plays the role with his usual hangdog sincerity, though he often looks like he is trying to remember where he left his car keys while simultaneously pretending to be terrified of a floating kettle. The supporting women do the heavy lifting here, particularly Kalki Koechlin as the eager girlfriend who gets pulled into the madness without ever quite figuring out the rules of the supernatural universe she has stepped into. Then there is Huma Qureshi, whose character exists mostly to anchor Bobo to some semblance of domestic normalcy before the narrative goes completely off the rails into folklore and smoke machines. Sen Sharma looms over the entire enterprise, however, even when she is off-screen for vast chunks of the runtime, bringing a theatrical, biting menace that recalls her chilling work in 15 Park Avenue without feeling like a direct retread of past glories. The ensemble never quite gels into a cohesive unit, largely because the script forces them into scenes where they have to explain complex occult lore while staring intently at each other across dimly lit dining tables, which drains the momentum right out of the room.

Visually, the movie is a mixed bag that relies too heavily on CGI ravens and digital fireballs during the climax, looking less like a polished studio feature and more like an expensive television pilot that ran out of money halfway through the shoot. The sound design is another minor annoyance, particularly a screeching violin cue that repeats every single time a character has a flashback to the childhood treehouse; it is a small thing, but it bugged me every time it dragged the scene down to the lowest common denominator. Yet, in between these cheap digital shortcuts, cinematographer Saurabh Goswami finds genuinely unsettling compositions in the cramped hallways and dusty magic props of Bobo's apartment, framing faces through glass partitions and slatted blinds so that everyone looks like a prisoner in their own home. Vishal Bhardwaj and Clinton Cerejo's music sits somewhere in the background, moody and atmospheric, refusing to break out into the kind of chart-topping romance numbers that usually derail hindi films just as they are starting to build some actual tension.

The core problem isn't the budget or the CGI, but rather a stubborn refusal to commit fully to either pure folk horror or psychological drama, leaving the narrative stranded in a grey zone where nothing feels entirely earned. When Bobo starts seeing signs of the daayan in modern, everyday settings like elevator shafts and children's birthday parties, the movie flirts with a fascinating idea about how childhood abuse and survivor's guilt manifest as literal monsters, but it gets distracted by silly flash-forwards and convoluted plot twists about ancient sacrifices. It wants to be both a clever deconstruction of Indian superstitions and a mainstream multiplex thriller with hit songs, and that split personality prevents any single sequence from landing with maximum impact. Hindi movies have always struggled to find a consistent tone for the supernatural genre, usually defaulting to tacky makeup effects and loud thunderclaps, and while this one aims considerably higher with its period flashbacks and literary references, it still trips over its own feet whenever it has to explain the mechanics of its own magic system.

By the time the third act arrives in a remote, fog-choked location that looks like it was rented for the weekend, the plot has become so tangled in its own mythology that even the actors seem to be guessing their motivations from one setup to the next. The final confrontation attempts a kind of emotional catharsis around the idea of believing women who are labeled witches by superstitious communities, but it feels tacked on, a modern thematic bandage slapped onto a pulpy creature feature that was having much more fun just being mean to Emraan Hashmi. It is a flawed, frustratingly uneven piece of work that stays in your head less for its grand statements about patriarchy or faith and more for the specific, ugly sound of Konkona Sen Sharma's fingernails scraping against a wooden doorframe, long after the logic of the plot has completely fallen apart.