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Apart from two or three gen­uinely scary heart-in-your-mouth moments, the ‘The Conjuring’ spin-off ‘The Nun’ is low on plot and even lower on atmo­sphere and tension. This is a period horror replete with gothic imagery and Catholic mysticism. But the gothic aesthetics is sparsely effec­tive and mostly bland while the uncooked screenplay from Gary Dauberman (the noted writer of ‘It’ and ‘Annabelle: Creation’) is full of subpar ideas that try to fill the entire run-time with information dumping instead of invoking any emotional hook points. The attempt is to tell an origin story of the demonic nun who has made several appearances across ‘The Conjuring’ movie universe. This film traces her roots back to 1952, to a remote Christian monas­tery in Romania. As the film opens, two nuns pass through the monas­tery’s dark hallway and stop right outside a sinister looking door. Seconds later an unseen creature attacks both of them.

The news of their death travels to the Vatican where a board of high ranking clergymen decides to send Father Burke (Demian Bichir) to investigate the spooky activities in the monastery. Father Burke is advised to recruit young Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga), who’s training to be a nun and has some strange psy­chic abilities. Together they reach the haunted monastery with the sole intent of knowing about the evil spirit lurking inside the place and casting her out.

The problem with ‘The Nun’ is that director Corin Hardy resorts to old-school horror trickery of jump scares and loud background scores. He and his writer make the cardinal sin in horror: revealing too much. The monster that haunts this pic­ture makes repetitive appearances and overexploitation of her pres­ence slowly wanes her impact from being terrorizing to tedious. There’s a sense of haste and incompleteness as the story moves forward in ran­dom directions.

Bichir and Farmiga, the two leads of the film, show no integ­rity to their loosely defined char­acters. Their outside snooping to unravel the mystery feels mechan­ical and fails to make us care about their ghost hunting. Despite this, there’s one well executed sequence involving a priest trapped inside a coffin, which hints of what the movie could’ve been if the makers were open to inventive horror tricks.

When ‘The Conjuring’ first came out, it paved the way for medium-budget horror films with high sense of scare and thrills. Its religious narrative and period setting were refreshing for hor­ror audiences who were getting tired of special effects horror. In a short time it established itself as a brand, resulting in byproducts like ‘The Nun’ that tarnishes the image of the original by committing the mistakes the original one so care­fully sidestepped.

Some movies are so forgettable, you have zero memory of them. ‘The Nun’ falls in the same cate­gory. It’s a quick cash grab from the studio that’s feeding off the loyalty of fans of the original film by giving them a second-rate entertainer. This contributes nothing substantial to the overall universe of ‘The Con­juring’. The only thing left to do is wait for James Wan (the creator and director of the original) to rejuve­nate the series.

 It might not be a book you would be comfortable carrying around because of the quite blatant title, but ‘Erotic Stories for Punjabi Wid­ows’ is an important work that you will want to recommend to every­one you meet.

The novel is audacious in its effort to defy conventions and give voice to older Punjabi women since their voices are rarely, if ever, heard. Also, there are multiple storylines with elements of rom-com, mys­tery, and family saga interwoven into the mix of erotic stories and all that make for good reading for people with different types of book preferences.

Here, the protagonist Nikki is a sin­gle 22-year-old university dropout who lives in London above the pub where she works while she searches for her true calling. Then she kind of finds what she is looking for when she lands up a job as a creative writ­ing instructor at the Sikh temple in Southall, a predominantly Punjabi area of London. Unfortunately, the creative writing class turns out to be an adult literacy class instead and the students—Punjabi widows—don’t even know how to read and write basic English.

Then the women decide that since they have lived in London for so long without speaking a word of English, they would much rather use the class for something construc­tive and begin sharing their stories instead. These stories stem from their dreams and fantasies and are deliciously romantic, erotic, and sometimes even downright scan­dalous, given the community they belong to.

The women know that if the self-appointed ‘guardians’ of South­all find out their secret they will have to face unspeakable wrath but they don’t care. Having been denied the simple pleasures that come with making their own decisions as their lives have always been about what their parents or husbands deemed fit for them, the class is the only place where each woman becomes an individual in her own right and is able to truly express herself. It’s also the thrill of the absence of shame they have carried with them for so long that keeps them going.

Then there is the parallel narrative that’s about Nikki, her relationship with her traditional family as she struggles to fit in as well as escape their ways, and her romance with a boy named Jason who has his own thing going on. You will find yourself cheering for Nikki as well while you pump your fists for the women who seem to be breaking barriers and rewriting their desti­nies. This sexy and heartwarming novel will definitely find a recep­tive audience among women who will want the men in their lives to read it too.

 ‘Stree’ takes a small town urban myth about a mysterious female ghoul to deliver a hor­ror comedy packaged with colorful characters, textured dialogues and good laughs that don’t let the movie down even when the material gets too trite and over the top.

Helmed by newcomer director Amar Kaushik, it is a comedy first and a horror film second. It may simmer a lot to find its footing in the first half, but when its narrative pad­dles finally kick in, it is successful in pulling off the rare feat of marrying horror with comedy.

Every year a weeklong festival is held in the village of Chanderi. For quite some time, this very festival has become the hunting ground for a strange creature that comes at night and abducts the village men. The village folks are so terrified with these mysterious disappear­ances that all houses feature a spell to ward off the evil spirit, who they have simply named Stree (‘The Lady’). Vicky (Rajkummar Rao), a local tailor, rubbishes them as mere superstition.

Even when his best buddies are spending their days speculating on the sightings of Stree, Vicky’s more concerned about the reappearance of an out-of-towner beauty (Shrad­dha Kapoor), who only visits Chan­deri during the festival.

Vicky is sure that this time he’ll muster up courage to express his real feelings for her when she approaches him to design a par­ticular dress for her. But Vicky’s romantic pursuits are cut short when one of his friends becomes the latest victim of Stree. He then seeks the help of Hindi pulp novel publisher Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi), a local expert on paranormal activi­ties, to find a way to permanently get rid of Stree.

For the most part, Stree relies on humor through comedic ban­ters. Rao and Tripathi, who shared a terrific chemistry in the dark comedy ‘Newton’, are in top form. Rao is lovable and easily switches back and forth between a gooey eyed lover boy and a terrified ghost buster. Tripathi is the arche­typical wise old guy who has all the answers.

His character has the expositional function of spelling out the finer narrative details about the ghost. A less capable actor may have made the character sound bland and information heavy, but not Trip­athi. He brings a spirited novelty with his conversational delivery that uses Hindi peppered with funnily pronounced English words, a line of tacky old Bollywood song on the ready for any odd situation. Equally effective is Shraddha Kapoor in her role that keeps you guessing about her character’s background and motives.

The film has so much to rave about but it also has many things not going for itself. The initial thirty to forty minutes are marred by pointless songs and lack of narra­tive direction. Some scenes where the tension could’ve been milked for greater comedic effects don’t land properly. But because the film doesn’t take itself too seriously and keeps the affair breezy and light hearted, it’s easy to follow. It right­fully finds rhythm as it goes along and delivers on the promise of the premise.

Stree is a broad comedy but doesn’t take its cinematic liberties for granted to display VFX mayhem to whisk cheap humor and ham-fisted horror thrills. It’s genuinely smart and effectively amiable horror comedy that will certainly inspire more movies in this genre.

 Newly opened in the quaint area of Baluwatar (100 meters on the left towards Maharajgunj from Shivapuri School), the Delish Opera Restro & Banquet is one of the biggest properties in the area. With ample seating space in the restaurant area for more than 100 guests at a time, Opera also has separate family or meeting rooms and a banquet hall that can host 500 people. The dedicated park­ing lot right next to the restaurant is also relieving considering Kathmandu’s parking problems. Opera offers a multi-cuisine menu including Continental, Indian, Thai and Nepali dishes, as well as a wide collection of alcoholic and non-alco­holic beverages. The restaurant opens its doors for lunch, drinks and dinners as well as private parties ranging from small get-togethers to corporate meet­ings and even weddings. The place to organize Teej celebrations this season?

Photos by Pritam Chhetri