The sound design in the opening ten minutes of Aafat-e-Ishq features a refrigerator hum that sits at precisely the wrong frequency, lingering in the mix even after the door slams shut. It is a small thing, but it bugged me, rattling around the back of the theater speakers like a loose screw. Or maybe it was just my headache acting up because I spent the morning trying to remember where I had seen Namit Das play that exact same meek, sweater-wearing side character before. You probably remember him from Aarya, where he brought a similar exhausted energy to scenes that required him to look terrified of his own shadow. Here, as the awkward suitor hovering around a dilapidated house in eastern India, he wears beige cardigans that look like they haven't seen a dry cleaner since the UPA administration. The film starts with a body, obviously, because that is how these dark comedies always kick off nowadays, borrowing more from Dead Man's Shoes than from the usual playbook of commercial hindi films. Indrajit Nattoji directs with a heavy hand that wants desperately to be quirky, shoving the camera into low angles whenever Neha Sharma’s Lallo walks down a hallway. Lallo is cursed, apparently, or just deeply unfortunate with her choice of romantic partners, who keep dropping dead around her of thoroughly unnatural causes. You get the sense that the director watched too many Guy Ritchie imports during film school and decided the secret to pacing was just speeding up the edit by four frames during dialogue scenes. It doesn't work, exactly, but it keeps you awake.

Neha Sharma carries the bulk of this weight with an expression that sits somewhere between exhaustion and mild annoyance, which turns out to be the exact right note for a woman whose kitchen keeps accumulating corpses. She doesn't play Lallo as a femme fatale or a helpless victim, choosing instead a weary practicality that feels lived-in. When she looks at the latest dead man sprawled across her threadbare carpet, there is no grand theatrical gasp, just a heavy sigh that suggests she now has to cancel her afternoon plans. It is a performance that reminds you of how much talent gets wasted in the background of bigger bollywood movies where the female lead usually just stands next to a tree looking pretty. Sharma has actual comic timing, deadpan and sharp, landing her punchlines just half a beat before you expect them. Yet the screenplay by Neha Sharma and Indrajit Nattoji—adapting the Hungarian film Liza, the Fox-Fairy—keeps tripping over its own feet whenever it tries to explain the supernatural element. Ila Arun shows up as a ghost who haunts Lallo, and their banter provides some of the film's only genuine momentum, trading insults in a kitchen that smells perpetually of fried onions and damp plaster. Arun is having a wonderful time, chewing on her dialogue with the kind of relish that makes you wish the movie had just been about the two of them living in that house together, arguing about men and mortality while the rest of the world goes about its business. Instead, the plot keeps dragging in more male characters—police inspectors, poets, local goons—none of whom are half as interesting as the two women sharing the frame.

The cinematography relies heavily on a jaundiced yellow grade that makes every interior look like it was filmed inside an old carton of cigarettes. It is an aesthetic choice that certainly communicates the suffocating nature of small-town life, though after forty minutes of it, you start craving the color blue. The lighting scheme often feels flat, trapping the actors against painted backdrops that never quite convince you they are real spaces with four walls. Still, the camera moves with a frantic energy during the murder sequences, tracking a dropped tea glass in slow motion or swooping over a balcony just as someone realizes their drink tastes funny. The soundtrack leans into old-school cabaret numbers and accordion-heavy cues that feel lifted straight from a forgotten European import, giving the proceedings an anachronistic flavor that doesn't quite belong to any specific decade. It is neither purely modern nor genuinely retro, floating in a weird stylistic limbo that some viewers might call atmospheric and others will call confusing. If I'm honest, the background score often telegraphs the jokes three seconds before the characters even open their mouths, robbing the comedy of its surprise.

Beneath the corpses and the comedy, there is an uncomfortable meditation on loneliness and the way small communities treat women who refuse to conform to standard marriage templates. Lallo is thirty-something and unmarried in a setting where that status makes her a public menace, which explains why the men sniffing around her door are either desperate, criminal, or deeply weird. Her curse—that every man who falls for her dies—is a neat structural device for exploring the dangers of male attention, turning a supernatural premise into a dark metaphor for self-defense. The film suggests that society is far more dangerous to Lallo than she could ever be to it, even with her growing collection of deceased suitors. Yet the script never fully commits to this social critique, pulling its punches just as things get genuinely dark, preferring to return to slapstick gags involving rug rollings and hidden footwear. It is a frustrating hesitation that keeps the story from achieving the bite it clearly wants, settling instead for a middling middle-ground where nobody gets too upset. You watch hindi movies hoping for that one risky narrative choice that changes the temperature of the room, and Aafat-e-Ishq comes close twice before backing away into a safe, predictable punchline.

Namit Das does his best with a character written mostly as a punchline about male desperation, but the role gives him nowhere new to go after the first twenty minutes. Whenever he enters a scene, the editing cuts to a medium shot of his nervously twitching fingers, a visual tic that the director relies on far too often to establish anxiety. It gets old fast. The supporting cast features several local theater actors who bring a wonderful texture to the background, particularly the shopkeepers who gossip about Lallo's visitors with the kind of practiced malice that only comes from decades of neighborhood boredom. They anchor the film in a recognizable reality even when the plot goes completely off the rails into ghost-story territory. You leave the screening thinking about Neha Sharma's posture—the way she slouched against that doorway while holding a mop—rather than the convoluted mystery of who is actually responsible for the body count.