Haiwaan (2026): Priyadarshan’s Craft Holds While His Thriller Slips
Sound arrives before sight in Haiwaan, and Priyadarshan leans into that idea with real craft. A blind caretaker maps a room by echo, and then the film cuts from a wedding mandap to a murder in the same breath, a juxtaposition that does more for its dread than any later setpiece.
Saif Ali Khan Builds Shyam Rane Out of Listening
Saif Ali Khan treats blindness as a discipline of listening rather than a mannerism to perform. In the establishing passages, Shyam identifies a visitor by scent, finds a doorway by footfall, and keeps his eyes unnervingly still while his neck does all the work. It is the most controlled acting in the film.
Beyond those sensory demonstrations, the role asks for very little, and Saif carries the protection sequences on quiet weight rather than range. The character’s interior life stays thin, which is a writing problem, not a performance one. He remains the reason to sit through 164 minutes.
The physical staging of blindness is researched rather than decorative. He tilts an ear toward a sound, counts paces to a wall, and lets other actors touch him first. It is the film’s most quietly confident register.
Priyadarshan Stages One Great Cross-Cut, Then Stops Trusting It
Priyadarshan’s craft is intact in the details: the cross-cutting between a wedding and a murder is his sharpest passage, and the Kochi, Vagamon and Ooty locations carry real texture. Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV called it “textually similar, texturally different and tonally entirely its own beast.”
The screenplay, however, never trusts that single idea and stacks subplots until the premise thins out. Logic gaps open around the villain’s motive and the police procedural, and the 164-minute runtime does the rest. A tighter draft might have saved this film.
The songs, meanwhile, arrive as interruptions rather than relief. Priyadarshan’s pacing instincts were once his greatest asset. Here the first half lingers on sensory setup while the second half sprints through strands it never resolves.
The Hide-and-Seek Setpieces Work; the Conjuring Climax Doesn’t
The genre engine here is genuinely promising. A blind man reads danger through sound and scent while a killer closes in, and the hidden-in-plain-sight conceit gives every chase a usable geometry. Revenge supplies the motive, and a child supplies the stakes.
The hide-and-seek sequences between protagonist and antagonist are the film’s best-built setpieces. Bodies move through rooms the audience can hear but the hero cannot see, and for a few minutes the tension holds. Then the procedural sprawl returns and the screw goes slack.
Akshay Kumar should be the engine of dread, but his Parshuram has minimal dialogue and limited screen impact. The performance tips over-the-top, generating laughs where fear belongs, and the Conjuring-style climax pays for it. Shweta Keshri of India Today was direct: “the villain needed to be genuinely frightening.”
Sound design this deliberate deserves a deeper shelf, and our collected Hindi Thriller reviews are where the noisier, nastier ones live.
Boman Irani Carries the Setup; the Sidekicks Carry Nothing
Boman Irani anchors the early proceedings as a conscience-stricken judge, and his exit is the one death in the film that carries moral weight. He gives the household a centre of gravity the rest of the ensemble never earns. His scenes are the ones that make the frame premise land.
Shriya Pilgaonkar and Saiyami Kher are stranded in underdeveloped subplots, and neither performer is given a scene to build a character on. Rajpal Yadav and Sharib Hashmi supply comic relief that feels a decade out of date. Mohanlal’s cameo as Ram Jayaraman lands as the one genuinely warm moment.
Saiyami Kher’s Inspector Varsha Joshi is written as procedure rather than person. Sharib Hashmi’s senior inspector exists mostly to announce plot turns. Asrani’s Hussein barely registers beyond one stretch of exposition. Neither performer can fix a script that treats them as furniture.
10, 172 IMDb Votes Agree With the Critics
The CBFC cleared Haiwaan with a U/A
Ankit Jaiswal is the Chief Author, covering Indian cinema and OTT releases with honest, no-filler criticism. An SEO strategist by background, he brings a research-driven approach to film writing, cutting through hype to tell you exactly what's worth your time.
