The art form of horror in Bollywood has been seen turning into several shapes and sizes in terms of catering to the audiences throughout the years, from being comical to provoking societal issues in the garb of a spirit or a mythical tale to awaken them. The post-COVID scenario on big screens especially in Indian Cinema has taken the form of culminating characters or entities from different stories into one, just to create havoc of discussions among audiences and a mood of celebration in theatres, in such an overindulgent manner, someone had to bring this crowd-pulling trick in horror films as well and decorate the entire idea of horror into a form of wholesome entertainment, adding a whole lot of subfactors in it as well. The real question that brings in the doubt is whether this works or remains as another victim of failed attempts in forced collaboration of different IPOs.

Stree 2, however, brings upon the latter aspect, and works extravagantly based on the doubts raised above. The predecessor of it, (Stree in 2018) helming an entire cinematic universe within the coveted genre of horror-comedy, brings forth a cocktail of a much bigger problem than other films in this franchise consisting of a werewolf (Bhediya) and a tree-borne demon (Munjya) turning the tables in a “demon-to-devoted” narrative. One of the most fundamental anomalies found in this trendy concept especially in Indian IPOs is the lack of conviction and forced approach of a celebratory moment, especially targeted for the box-office haul, sometimes succeeded, other times didn’t. All the brownie and sundae points goes to this film for not only making this concept seem enjoyable and convincing, but also at a point of certainty, where the pivotal characters are united in a point of commonality, which acts as a bridge between the other films in this universe. 

While the first part had the narrative of a rather bluntly believed folklore of a woman spirit abducting men late at night during a certain time of the year, the gender narrative gets swapped in this part as a headless demon, lazily named as a “Sar-kata”, abducts women, that too the ones with a “modern” mentality, and traps them into an abyss of hell, which brings forth the quirky, comical and witty gang of Chanderi, the fictional town, to save the damsels in distress, once again. The soul of both the Stree films (let’s just call it the universe USP) is the humor which is balanced between silliness and quirkiness, and all of them makes it worth the giggles and cackles in the theatre is because of an effortless caliber pulled off by the entire cast. From Rajkummar Rao to Pankaj Tripathi to Abhishek Banerjee to Aparshakti Khurana, the balance between humor and horror is eye-soothing and jaw-soothing only because of them, and it is their naivety that adds an innocent yet tongue in cheek flavour to this franchise. Best thing about sequels, especially when it is an Indian film and deals with comedy, is to keep zero expectations, it will either hit you with a bucket of surprises or will torture you to death with it’s silliness. Luckily, this film does not fall in the latter case.