‘Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba’ movie review: Taapsee Pannu returns with a wilting rose

The dangers and deception that defined the 2021 dark romantic thriller feel contrived in the sequel

Three years after Vinil Mathew’s romantic thriller brought some cheer during the COVID-19 pandemic, Haseen Dillruba returns to cash in on Rani Kashyap’s charm and goodwill. Promising to be a racy sequel to enliven the rainy season, it, however, turns out to be a damp squib. The makers once again try to dish out a desi dose of pulp fantasy to Netflix audiences but fail to turn a Manohar Kahani into a romantic noir.

Part of the problem is that apart from the clueless police at the end, there was little left to add to the scandalous story of the small-town beautician who takes time to make up her mind about the kind of man she wants in her life. As a result, in the sequel, directed by Jayprad Desai, the build-up feels a tad forced, and then the purple prose of writer Kanika Dhillon bleeds one to boredom as the shallow dialogue-baazi takes a long time to translate into action. Despite being set in Agra, the romance lacks soul and the crime is bereft of passion. Going back and forth to keep the suspense ticking turns out to be more of an editing gimmick than an organic exercise.

After taking the police for a ride, Rani Kashyap (Taapsee Pannu) and Rishu Saxena (Vikrant Massey) plan to escape abroad. In comes Jimmy Sheirgill as police officer Mrityunjay Prasad to scuttle their scheme. He has a personal connection with the case and is keen on unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of Neel Tripathi (Harshvardhan Rane), the third angle in the original.

Meanwhile, another besotted admirer, Abhimanyu (Sunny Kaushal), walks into Rani’s life and she finds a modus operandi to throw the police off track in the game of cat and mouse. Complicating matters, the one-handed Rishu also has a specially-abled admirer. The premise looks purposeful on paper, and the possibilities are immense, but the thriller fails to bring one anywhere close to the edge of the seat. The mood keeps simmering for a while but never really comes to a boil.

Rani’s dilemma in the original made it a fun watch. She marries a mild-mannered man but gets charmed by the husband’s rakish cousin. When the devoted husband develops muscle, Rani’s confusion sets off a chaos that is not just skin deep. Three summers later, the deception and danger become one-dimensional and the supposed gotcha moment gets our goat.

The self-awareness of introducing a fictional pulp fiction writer whose novels inspire everybody in the film as a tribute to the genre gets a bit too obvious and his pearls of wisdom on relationships lose their shine pretty soon.

The only time my heart truly pounded in anticipation is when Ek Hasina Thi, Ek Deewana Tha played in the background. That a 1980 song from Subhash Ghai’s Karz is borrowed to generate goosebumps in 2024 says something about the state of originality and creativity in Bollywood. However, the writing is not in sync with the moral ambiguity of the iconic song for the makers play safe with the actor’s image in the second edition. The dirty and sultry shades of red that are thrown in the parlour conversations don’t reflect in the storytelling. Moreover, the defining line of the film—“if love does not push you to the brink of insanity, it is not true love—is reduced to a throwaway remark in the sequel.