In Vash Level 2, Gujarati writer-director Krishnadev Yagnik is back on territory he visited in his 2023 hit Vash: demonic possession.
Vash, which was remade in Hindi in 2024 as Shaitaan, explores the manner in which the evil wizard Pratap hypnotises Arya (Janki Bodiwala) and turns her against her family. By the end of the ordeal, Arya’s father Atharva (Hitu Kanodia) manages to capture Pratap and secretly imprison him in his house – but at a great personal cost. Arya remains under Pratap’s spell, lingering in a vegetative state.
In Vash Level 2, the possession afflicts an entire girl’s school in an unnamed city in Gujarat.
It’s the first day of the new school term. The students stream into the canteen. As soon as they have finished their meals, they come under a spell. Their mysterious string-puller demands monstrous obedience.
The principal (Monal Gajjar), the rest of the staff and the police officer (Chetan Daiya) are unable to communicate with the increasingly violent girls. The spell-caster, speaking through a student, demands to meet Pratap (Hiten Kumar), forcing Atharva into a confrontation he thought he had dealt with when he locked Pratap away.
Vash Level 2 has been dubbed into Hindi. The 143-minute film confirms Yagnik’s control over pace and mood, especially in the terrific first hour that goes from the routine to the horrendous with immense smoothness.
The behaviour of the girls – carefully identified as 17- and 18-year-olds – is straight out of a cross-breed between a slasher movie and a zombie thriller. Having raised the stakes with many more targets, Vash Level 2 is poised to deliver the same knockout punch as its predecessor.
What worked well for Vash was its focus on a single family under unimaginable attack. Yagnik revealed the warlock’s ultimate plan through a steady escalation of moments. The reverse approach is at work in Vash Level 2, in which the mass hypnosis is gradually scaled back to unmask the new tormentor.
The result is anti-climactic, while also laying bare the gaps in Yagnik’s screenplay. The new movie can’t escape the suspicion that Yagnik has essentially remade Vash by rearranging the order of a few elements.
The absence of a wider reaction to the terrors taking place at the school, which spill out into the city, is glaring. I want more forces, more ambulances, demands the police officer. Where’s the psychologist, the team of special forces, the concerned bureaucrat, or even a government minister or two?
Yagnik’s economy, complemented by Shivam Bhatt’s sharp editing, is most successful in its depiction of concentrated, clinical horror. By avoiding the distractions that mar Indian horror movies, Yagnik expertly turns the screws on his characters as well as his viewers. Andrew Samuel’s background score is the only sonic accompaniment to the screaming of the girls.
With the girls as well as the women in various degrees of helplessness, it’s left to the men to save or ruin the day. Lip service is paid to the problem of misogyny, but not very convincingly.
Hitu Kanodia deftly plays an unlikely hero who is in danger of becoming possessed himself by a cycle of vengeance. For all its provocations, Vash Level 2 hasn’t come around to digging deeper into the psyche of its characters, content with delivering effective shocks and nightmarish visuals.
