June 28, 2025: Maa Review: There’s blood in the soil, a curse in the air, and a storm brewing inside a grieving mother. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a gut-wrenching horror drama, right? Maa, directed by Vishal Furia of Chhorii fame, opens with a dramatic sacrifice and a haunting mystery from the past, but instead of exploding with emotion and terror, it simmers gently before fizzling out halfway.
The story jumps from a disturbing ritual involving a girl child in Chandrapur to four decades later, where Ambika (Kajol) lives a seemingly perfect life with her husband Shubhankar (Indraneil Sengupta) and daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma). A tragic death brings them back to the dreaded ancestral village, and that’s where old secrets start bleeding through the cracks.
Maa Review: When a Mother Becomes a Monster, But the Story Stays Ordinary
The core of Maa rests on a fascinating concept, the myth of Raktabija and Goddess Kali, where every drop of the demon’s blood gives birth to more evil. It’s ripe for a visually rich, thematically layered story. But the film takes its sweet time to build tension. The first half is more sleepy than spooky.
When the second half picks up, the narrative finally moves, but the payoff feels delayed and diluted. The climax, while visually charged, feels like a moment that comes too late to save the rest.
The supernatural creature, meant to haunt our nightmares, instead looks like it wandered off a dated TV set. It gets plenty of screen time, but not once does it truly scare. More makeup than menace, more VFX than visual fear.
Kajol as Ambika delivers what you’d expect, solid, but familiar. There’s no emotional shift, no transformation. The rage of a mother in Maa morphing into a mythic force should have been the emotional heart of the film. But it gets lost in the noise. Ronit Roy, in contrast, gets a little more room to explore, and brings some weight to his scenes. The mother-daughter bond, a potential anchor for the film, never quite lands either.
A song in the climax, yes, really, breaks the tone completely, and adds to the growing list of missed chances.
There are important ideas buried in Maa, patriarchy, sacrifice, justice, and maternal strength. But these themes, wrapped in ritual and horror tropes, don’t hit home the way they should.
Maa Review in conclusion
Maa had the heart of a myth and the soul of a mother’s rage, but somewhere between the script and the screen, it lost its way. It’s watchable for the premise, but don’t expect to walk away moved or scared.