Agyaat

Priya Sharma's assessment:

There's a beautiful kernel of an idea buried here—a Bollywood film crew becomes unwitting prey in an alien hunt, a collision of art and survival that could have been genuinely unsettling. And for stretches, director Prashant Mandal leans into that tension with commitment. The early scenes of the crew's confident camaraderie before the terror sets in give us people to root for, and when the kills begin, there's a visceral quality that refuses to look away. But the film stumbles badly when it tries to balance Bollywood conventions with genuine horror. The performances, particularly in moments of panic and desperation, often slip into melodrama when the material demands restraint. The alien itself—we've seen this creature design before, and it lacks the mythic terror that would elevate the premise beyond "stranded in the jungle with a predator."

What ultimately breaks the film is its inability to sustain the claustrophobia and fear it builds so carefully. Scenes stretch, explanations overexplain, and the dialogue sometimes undercuts the dread rather than deepening it. There are moments—a character's last stand, the quiet dread of night falling—where you feel the film it could have been. But too often, the emotional authenticity gets swallowed by genre mechanics that feel borrowed rather than reimagined. It's a film that respects its premise more than it trusts its audience, spelling out terror rather than letting us sit with it.

Rating: 5.