Sheela review: Ragini Dwivedi's return is woefully dull, problematic

2/5

Story:

When Sheela reaches Kerala to sell the resort she owns and get out of a major financial crisis, little does she know that trouble would quite literally come knocking on her door. Forced to reckon with a most dreadful situation that one couldn't even possibly imagine, Sheela must now find the courage to battle and overcome evil.

Review:

Sheela is a film that feels like it was made at gunpoint. It grossly trivializes rape, foregoes nuance and sensitivity and refuses to be of any value during its sub 2 hours of runtime. It's a survival thriller alright, but the only person surviving is you with mental scars etched permanently. In one of the concluding moments of the film, a character yells out "What I did was wrong" and pleads with the ruthless killer in front to let him go. Having purchased the ticket to watch the film, I, too, felt quite passionately that what I did was, indeed, wrong. Just that neither of us was spared.

But from afar, you do sense what director Balu Narayanan was chasing with this film, meaning that there is some kind of intent behind this colossal mess. Sheela, played by Ragini Dwivedi, shows up in an undisclosed quaint town in Kerala to sell the resort she owns. She is in debt, we learn, but her "financier" is a thug by all means and has already threatened to kill her family if the money isn't paid back asap. If this problem wasn't big enough, Sheela crosses paths with a few bad people along the way to the resort and her luck is so terrible that those very bad people unwittingly lodge up in her resort (in the adjacent room, in fact).

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Now, on paper, at least, this comes across as a gripping setup that has a lot of potential. Balu Narayanan wants to take the plot towards that point where the group of men overpower the protagonist who has nowhere to hide or run from their wrath. And that wrath is expelled sooner than later but Sheela somehow manages to escape from the clutches of the villains, fortunately finding a cop car in the darkness. But since her luck is quite poor, as pointed out already, the cops, too, (spoiler alert) end up in cahoots with the evil group. What happens after this is pretty graphic and gruesome, considering that Sheela is gang-raped by the men (as many as nine of them) but the director spares us by not showing this on the screen.

And yet, the worst hadn't fully arrived because the film is now in the middle of a headlong plunge towards self-destruction. Having survived that barbaric attack, Sheela triggers a police investigation in the pursuit of those nine men. The story then unfolds largely as a flashback to help us make sense of how Sheela got away, what happened to the men and whether, or not, justice would be served. The only concern, though, is it's all executed in such a clunky and sloppy manner that you are left in a perpetual wince, unable and unwilling to pay attention to what's happening. Also, you just don't care anymore.

Ragini Dwivedi is pretty uninspiring and does not seem in control of the character at any point. There are fleeting moments where the film evokes a reaction or empathy out of you but that cannot be attributed to the performances. The rest of the cast includes lesser-known faces from Malayalam cinema (the film is a Malayalam film dubbed in Kannada) but none of them leave any positive impression. Music and cinematography are passable.

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Verdict:

Sheela, in a way, marks the return of Ragini Dwivedi to the acting world and one does spot a reason behind her picking this role. There's that element of survivorship which is laced with aggression and a good scope for a "strong" portrayal, but neither does the film offer her the opportunity nor does she seem too invested. All the dramatic potential is squandered by some poor writing and boring staging, which makes this film an excruciating watch.