Arunachal Bhediya

Itanagar, Nov 25: Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu asks everyone to watch ‘Bhediya’ and mesmerised by the beauty of the state.

“Do not miss to watch Bhediya and in being thrilled and mesmerised by the beauty of Arunachal Pradesh,” wrote Chief Minister Pema Khandu on Twitter.

Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon’s Bhediya hit the theatres on November 25. The film, directed by Amar Kaushik, is a pucca entertainer with minor shortcomings.

The horror comedy movie, starring Varun Dhawan in the title role, was shot entirely in the towns of Ziro, Sagalee, Pakke Kessang in Arunachal Pradesh.

The cast of Bhediya includes Abhishek Banerjee, who was one of the three friends in Stree who encounter a beautiful apparition that spells preternatural trouble for men.

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In an end-credits scene, Bhediya acknowledges its debt to Stree, the film that inaugurated Maddock Films’ horror-comedy universe that now seems to be well-nigh back on course after the forgettable and wayward Roohi detour.

“Bhediya” follows Bhaskar (Dhawan), who transforms into a werewolf on every full moon night after he is bitten by a mythical wolf. The film is the third offering in Vijan’s horror-comedy universe after “Stree” (2018) and “Roohi” (2020).

Bhediya reworks the conventions of the genre to craft the story of a forest facing the threat of denudation in the name of development. The film would have had far greater thrust had it been a tad shorter. But despite a runtime of more than two and a half hours, the plot elements that it puts together form a cohesive whole without overly straining credulity.

Bhediya, thanks to the inventive and intriguing ways that it adopts a genre that has spawned many a movie over the decades from Paul Schrader’s Cat People and John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London to (closer home) Rajkumar Kohli’s Jaani Dushman and Mahesh Bhatt’s Junoon (both which find a mention in this film), has an own unique footprint that makes watchable all the way.