Naar Nari (2004)
Cast: Raza Murad, Amit Panchori, Rina Kapoor, Rimple Narula
Director:  Suresh Jain
Nutshell:  A furious and vengeful father turns his daughter into a Vishkanya to exact revenge from those who raped and murdered his elder daughter.
Review by Omar Khan

 

 

Bollywood horror movies come in all shapes, forms and sizes. Many are clunky monster movies, as represented by the Ramsay Brothers' features. Signature elements include Old Havelis, Tantriks, Hairy or fanged monsters and the like. These would represent classic Bollywood horror movies from the 70s and 80s. We also have the B- and Z-grade cheap horror movies, which often feature dreadful makeup effects and rely on rubber masks and the like, with kitchen-sink gore and blood effects that are laughable yet delightful for how dreadful they are. We even have some more serious horror films that normally take themselves too seriously and end up on the hammy side of the genre. However, there are exceptions, with films like Gehrayee presenting their subject with more restraint than usual. It's all about business and what will ultimately sell, and nobody is interested in making a film that nobody will pay the ticket price for. So, most horror filmmakers usually lay on whatever they can very thick and try to check all the required boxes; whether they succeed or not is open to discussion. From Jaani Dushman and The Ramsay Brothers' classics such as Purana Mandir and Bandh Darwaza, to Ram Gopal Verma's forays into the genre such as Bhoot and Kaun? And Raat, or then the kitchen sink marvels doled out by Kanti Shah and Bhooshan Lal or the Ed Wood of Indian cinema, Harinam Singh. 

Often, though, there are films that sell themselves as horror films but fall so short that they miss all the targets and end up as feeble exploitation films that fail to deliver anything for their audience to get hooked on. Sadly, the film Naar Nari from 2004 is one of those films. It tries to sell itself as a film in the vein and style of the Kanti Shah B-movies featuring Sapna and friends, but it fails horribly in this endeavour. Any audience investing their time in this movie would expect to be entertained by fabulous snake-oriented manoeuvres and a story that feeds off the wonderful snake folklore so common to films of the Asian subcontinent. Of course, you can expect some seediness, scenes of seduction, and deliciously staged deaths as well. Perhaps a few saucy songs and dances along the way. It's the least that an audience might expect from a film titled Naar Nari. In this case, sadly, the film fails to land any punch and falls absolutely flat on its face. 

The opening is somewhat promising, with seasoned horror veteran Raza Murad, who has two young daughters, barely scraping together a living as a snake charmer and holy man. He aims to marry off his older daughter, Saukanya, so that he can fulfil his role as a dutiful father. After that, he has to bring up his younger child and find a suitor for her in the future. Early on in the film, he is seen playing his Been while his beautiful daughter sings and dances to the tunes, and they earn a few rupees each day, but it's tiring and not very profitable, and yet they manage to get by, if only just. One day, as Murad is off in the fields searching for new snakes, playing his flute to entice them, his daughter is off bathing in the stream and catches the eye of some uncouth city lads on the prowl. There is a particularly distasteful scene where his elder daughter is gang raped and left to die. The louts abscond, and the younger daughter remains, having witnessed the ghastly rape right in front of her. 

Raza Murad promises vengeance, and he turns his younger daughter into a Vishkanya by feeding her fresh snake venom.  

Later on, she develops into a fetching beauty and finds herself a decent lad as a boyfriend in Amit Pachori. The rest of the film is basically a tale of her encountering various sleazy people in her life and how she does away with them with her Vishkanya powers. After the third or fourth scenario of seduction and killing without any special effects or interesting makeup, things get repetitive and tedious to the extreme. The film plods along in this manner with no twists or interesting passages or personalities to liven up proceedings. Since everyone already knows how this kind of story will play out, it's really just a matter of waiting for the film to wind up and by the time it does, nobody is invested enough in any of the characters or the plot to care. It's neither a camp jungle epic in the style of the Sherni movies nor does it have any of the stinging and fabulously deranged dialogues of a Kanti Shah masala movie nor does it have the cheese of a Harinam Singh movie nor the appalling but mesmerising ineptitude of a Bhooshan Lal saga. It starts flat and stays that way throughout its mercifully short running time of 90 minutes. Even Raza Murad, usually so entertaining, is wasted in a role of little consequence. There isn't even a madcap Tantrik to liven things up along the way. This film is dull and uninspired and fails abysmally on all counts. A total waste of time and totally nondescript and only memorable for how utterly boring and sterile it is. Definitely one to avoid.

Turns out the film is falsely labelled as Jungle Ki Nagin on YouTube and is in fact a film titled Naar Nari. The uploaders on YouTube have tried to lure chumps like myself into believing the film was a saucy snake romp based in the jungle, and this one is absolutely not what was hoped for. It's unsurprising that the film has fallen off the face of the earth with hardly a trace of it remaining. Not even a poster or a VCD cover of Naar Nari can be found on the internet.