The movie industry is notorious for exploiting the vulnerable, and complaints have been usually buried till the #MeToo movement blew the lid on the best-kept secrets of Hollywood as well as the Indian film industry.
However, child abuse is a touchy subject, in spite of scandals such as the one surrounding Michael Jackson. The documentary Leaving Neverland (2019) tackled the Jackson case. Around the same time, the British series Dark Money came out, which is the source of the SonyLIV show Kafas (Cage).
Director Sahil Sangha and writer Karan Sharma have Indianised Dark Money in minor ways. The victim is a 15-year-old boy, the abuser a movie star. A character ponderously advises a teenage girl that she must not become an actress because the industry isn’t a nice place for women. It has not occurred to him that boys can be abused too – “whoever has heard of a man being raped”, he says, in all ignorance or innocence.
When Sunny (Mikail Gandhi) returns from the shoot of the film Superdad, which features the actor Vikram (Vivan Bhathena), his family and neighbours are excited, but the boy is listless. He reveals to his parents Raghav (Sharman Joshi) and Seema (Mona Singh) that he was assaulted by Vikram. A video shot on a cellphone backs the incident.
Raghav is furious first with his mother-in-law (Zarina Wahab), who was supposed to chaperone Sunny, and then with his wife, who aspired to be an actress herself and hopes to fulfil her dreams through Sunny and daughter Shreya (Tejasvi Ahlawat). Seema spends her free time auditioning for screen work but faces no harassment, making the Sunny episode look like a one-off incident, thus ignoring the magnitude of the problem.
The video isn’t enough to incriminate Vikram. On their lawyer’s advice, the cash-trapped couple takes the money offered by Vikram and signs a non-disclosure agreement. Their material circumstances change for the better, but money can’t erase their shame and guilt nor wipe out Sunny’s agony.
Sangha takes up a sensitive subject but doesn’t want to deal with its ugliness, which considerably reduces the extent of the crime. The original series was flimsy enough. The Hindi remake doesn’t add too many layers.
Kafas is unable to move the viewer as it should have because most of the characters are unsympathetic and the issue isn’t handled with any depth. Instead of staying with the family’s emotional crumbling, the six-episode show scatters all over the place – Raghav’s problems with his ex-wife (Mona Wasu) and their aggressive son (Araham Sawant), Shreya’s troublesome boyfriend (Ishank Saluja), Sunny’s friendship with Vikram’s bullying son Agastya (Ethan) and his rich gang.
The most despicable character is neither Vikram nor the Vashishts, the shark-like lawyers, or even the unscrupulous journalist who causes a near-tragedy, but Vikram’s wife (Preeti Jhangiani), who knows of her husband’s predilections but loves the fancy lifestyle more.
Mona Singh as the miserable mother stands way above the others in the cast. The weak link is Sunny, who wears a single expression throughout – he should have shown some spark of the talent that got him picked for the film in the first place.