Mohini is a witch of the witch-witch kind, according to her brother-in-law Bantu (Anurag Thakur). Bantu has espied Mohini (Yami Gautam Dhar) in a demonic state, her eyes aglow as she carries out dastardly acts. Surely Bantu is wrong about the perfectly behaved daughter-in-law of the joint family in Meerut that is so sprawling we never quite know how many people are in it?
Bantu isn’t wrong. The movie around Mohini is. The origin story in Balaji Mohan’s Nayyi Navelli is far too weak, confused and uninvolving.
The initially promising film piggybacks on the Ramayana even as it hops onto the box office-friendly bandwagon of films that come with a disclaimer that they are not promoting occult beliefs and then proceed to do exactly that. Based on a story by Himanshu Sharma and written Divy Nidhi Sharma, the film has something to do with a stone that corrupts whoever possesses it.
At some point through the various ages in Hindu mythology, this gewgaw came into Raavan’s hands. As the stone’s guardian, who is working directly under the guidance of the god Ram, Mohini is all that stands between the stone’s latest owner and all-round destruction.
Mohini’s husband Raja (Addinath Kothare) gets dragged into the good-versus-evil battle. Various other relatives, including...