Fun movie, funny movie, intricate movie. I am really looking forward to digging up how it was put together! And I am really really looking forward to all of you helping me understand the ending. Oh, and if you haven’t seen it, get over to my No Spoilers review instead! You should read it anyway, because that’s where I talk about performances and stuff.
Whole plot in two paragraphs:
Rajkummar is a brilliant talented tailor living in a small town that has a local ghost story. During the annual festival, all the townspeople put “Stree [woman] come tomorrow” on their walls to keep her away. Legend goes that she wants men, she takes them and leaves only their clothes behind. Rajkummar doesn’t believe this but his friends Aparshakti Khuranna and Abhishek Banarjee do. Rajkummar is distracted by a pretty woman, Shraddha Kapoor, who shows up when he is alone and asks for his help. First to sew a dress for her, then at their next meeting, she asks him for a list of strange items. In between he and his friends go to a party where one of the guests is taken by the ghost after Rajkummar pees on the warning sign outside as a joke. Rajkummar tracks all the things down for her while his friends make fun of him and delivers them and they go off alone again. His friends try to find him, afraid that she is the ghost in disguise since she asks for strange things and is never seen by anyone else. They can’t find him, but it keeps them out late, and Abhishek Banarjee is taken. Aparshakti confronts Rajkummar the next day, telling him that his girlfriend is the ghost and he must confront her and get their friend back. INTERVAL
In the second half, Rajkummar confronts Shraddha and gently tries to figure out if she is the ghost or not, but she doesn’t seem to understand his questions and then disappears. Rajkummar and Aparshakti go to Pankaj Tripathi, the local bookseller who has printed up pamphlets about how to avoid the ghost. He pulls out an old guidebook that tells the legend, she was a beautiful dancer and all the men wanted her. She fell in love with a man who saw her soul not just her body but the townsmen were jealous. They killed the couple, and now she haunts the town looking for for men to take her revenge. Rajkummar remembers an old mansion near where Shraddha took him and they go investigating there. Rajkummar is almost captured by the ghost, but is saved…BY SHRADDHA!!! Abhishek Banarjee comes out and is freed thanks to their weakening the ghost. They take him home and Shraddha explains that she isn’t the ghost, she is a ghost hunter, someone she cared about was taken by the ghost and so she comes back every year hunting her. Abhishek is still possessed, they tie him up and go looking for the author of the book for more information. He explains that there is a specific legend, someone with love in his eyes, the soul of an artist, an only son who lives like a prince, born by an oak tree, and the bachelor son of a courtesan is who will save the city. Rajkummar’s friends realize this is he, and break the news to him that his mother was a courtesan. Abhishek meanwhile has escaped and scrubbed the warning signs off the houses, allowing her in to take the men of the neighborhood. In this extreme circumstance, they decide to invite her in to Rajkummar’s house, use him as bait as a bridegroom, and then Shraddha will kill her. The plan works more or less, but Rajkummar can’t bring himself to kill her, seeing it as just another injustice done to her. Instead Shraddha suggests he cut off her braid, her source of strength. The ghost vanishes and the missing men return, Rajkummar and his friends are hailed as heroes and Shraddha leaves town. Rajkummar says good-bye to her, still not knowing her name. Shraddha gets on the bus and pulls the braid from her bag, merges it with her own hair, and vanishes. The next year, the ghost returns to the town gates to find a statue in her honor and the message “Stree, please protect us”. Rajkummar arranged for her to finally get the respect she deserved and never got in life.
Okay, I want to jump to the end. There are two themes in this film, the first is the stupidity of young men, and the second is how that stupidity can lead to not seeing women clearly. Rajkummar only sees Shraddha as the pretty girl who smiles at him, doesn’t even think twice about her strange behavior. But at the same time, it’s shockingly easy for his friends to convince her she is the murderous ghost. There is no in between, either they are so stupid that they think all woman are innocent, or they are so stupid that they think they are all evil. We get a little mini-journey of this in Rajkummar’s discover that his dead mother, who he always respected and loved, was a prostitute. He is shocked and angry at first, it changes everything in how he sees her. But then he talks with his father and quickly realizes that it changes nothing, she is still what she was, the same person. He had to look past his blindness. We see this same idea over and over again, the dancer hired for his friend’s party who they are all a little afraid of and excited by at the same time, the prostitute who demands money from Rajkummar after he causes her client to be taken, leading up to Rajkummar’s realization when he looks at the ghost, with her powers of ghostly seduction removed, that she is just a sad victim of male cruelty, and the solution can’t be more cruelty, it has to be acceptance and peace. That’s the key, once men see women for who they really are, with the haze of sexual attraction removed, they realize they are just people, fragile human people.
But, how does that theme work with the ending? It works beautifully with the lead up to it. Shraddha sincerely likes Rajkummar, but is also using him to help gather her supplies. He sees her as only a pretty girl and is blind to the fact that she has motivations of her own, a life of her own. If Shraddha had simply left town with a smile and an implied promise to return, that would have fit well with the rest of the film. She likes Rajkummar, but she has more happening in her life than he does, she is the mysterious hero riding into town and then out again, while he is the local staying behind. But, her pulling out and putting on the braid changes everything.
I see 3 possible meanings to it:
- She wanted the power, she wanted to defeat the ghost not to save people but just to get her braid and power.
- She was possessed by the ghost during that final confrontation, and once she puts the braid on, she returns fully to the ghost identity.
- She was the ghost all along in some complicated fashion I can’t even begin to untangle.
Any of these meanings have the same result, the woman who seemed harmless actually was evil in the end. Which leads down a dangerous path of maybe woman can’t be trusted. A dangerous path, and also one that doesn’t fit with the rest of the film. The very next scene is the ghost back in town the next year looking at her statue, finally given respect. How does that message, of a woman being more abused by than abusing, fit with Shraddha using Rajkummar and friends to get the braid? And with whatever it is she wants to do with it? I’m just at a total loss! Help me!
The reason this stands out so much is because the rest of the film is perfectly constructed, step by step the authors had figured it all out. For one thing, the idea that the ghost is just a local legend is dealt with early on, her appearance at the party neatly takes care of it. She can come in because the warning was destroyed, so that explains why she hasn’t been a problem in previous years. Abhishek sees her downstairs first, but only as a shadow on a curtain, which serves to build tension for this moment and also for the later reveal of her face. And when she takes the man (who was established as “bad” because he hires a prostitute so the audience doesn’t have to feel too bad about it), it is very dramatic with breaking glass and so on. So we know for sure there really is a ghost, no possibility of a misunderstanding. But at the same time the way it was handled means there are still thrills to look forward to, the reveal of her powers and her appearance and so on.
Shraddha’s behavior as written can play equally 3 ways, an innocent young woman in love, a ghost seducing a human, and a pragmatic ghost hunter using her feminine power on a local. That’s a tricky balance, but it is carried off through scenes that show us just enough but not too much. A shared headset listening to music, a comment about not having a cell phone, and so on. Until, again, the ending.
There’s also the essential flip of the script, taking the traditional hero of ghost films, the brave young man, and making him the cowardly victim. And taking the traditional victim, the weak beautiful woman, and making her the hero. I don’t know as much about Hindi horror tradition as I should, but I know that there is a trope of the young woman who is possessed and becomes overly sexual. It’s such an obvious social statement on Indian society, how mature female sexuality is the greatest danger, that it is hardly worth discussing.
(Fear the woman! Fear her!)
But in this film, it is the man who is possessed. And the woman who has to be the voice of reason and rescue him. It is the man who is set out as sexual bait, dressed up in wedding clothes and set on his bed (another trope, the innocent young bride is the one who is possessed. And again, blah-blah, India’s greatest fear is a sexually awakened woman versus an undemanding inexperienced bride). All the way to the end of the film when the terrified men of the town have taken to going around in saris, and hiding in their homes, begging their wives to come back soon. Vijay Raaz, in a cameo as the writer, foreshadows this. He gives a speech of how the men of the past saw Stree, they wanted woman to remain in their homes, off the streets, modestly covered in saris. And now it is the men who are doing that. While Shraddha strides around in blue jeans carrying a knife.
This is also not the first time the “tragic prostitute ghost” has come up in Indian film, it was the plot of Manichitrathazhu/Bhool Bhailayya after all. But this time they explicitly acknowledge that the ghost was “done wrong” in the past and there is a collective guilt for that, they should treat the spirit that remains better than they treated her in life, if at all possible. Her status as a tragic dancing girl is not treated as a poetic tragedy of the past, but as something that was wrong then and is wrong now.
(And in case we missed it, there was a dancing girl scene in the present too, showing how it still happens)
And it is not the first time the “I fell in love and then learned she was a ghost” idea was teased in Indian film. That is one of the most tenacious urban legends, there’s one of “Resurrection Mary” in my town, she asks young men for rides from the ballroom to the cemetery and then vanishes. Again, there is a clear logic behind it, young men are stupid and can be easily confused when confronted with a beautiful woman. They may not notice she is a ghost, but they also may find a late night drive with a beautiful stranger so magical that it is easy to be convinced it was mystical. This movie turns it around, makes us see it from the ghost’s side of things. Rajkummar is not a brave clean smart young man, he is as dumb as all young men are. And he sees Shraddha as a ghost simply because he isn’t smart enough to imagine any better explanation.
Really, there are so many things that are done well. Everything that is usually serious is turned into humor so we can see why we never should have taken it seriously to begin with. But then there’s the ending, with Shraddha. And it drops the whole film several points in my estimation. So, out of 100, I would have to give it only 90 instead of 99.
dontcallitbollywood 
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How do they show the ghost? Is it some sort of fade-in fade-out special effects? It seems like it would be difficult not for it to look cheesy.
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They kept it simple, she is draped in a sari and floating above the ground, you can’t see her face clearly because the sari is covering it.
On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 9:11 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I thought the way she was shown flying was super cheesy, distractingly janky. I thought special effects were cheap enough for them to do a better job with this.
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So apparently the ghost whose feet don’t touch the ground is a trope in Asian horror films which is why they made Stree look that way. I learned that on Jaby Koay’s trailer reaction on YouTube.
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Oh yeah, that’s one of those things I wouldn’t have been able to say if you asked me straight out, but once you said it, it makes sense. I feel like I’ve seen references to that in other movies. I think in Paheli Rani might ask to see Shahrukh’s feet.
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 10:13 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=newssearch&cd=7&ved=0ahUKEwihrY72yJzdAhUIVH0KHaL9AUsQqQIIPygAMAY&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesnownews.com%2Fentertainment%2Fnews%2Fbollywood-news%2Farticle%2Fexclusive-stree-sequel-confirmed-rajkummar-rao-and-shraddha-kapoor-starrer-to-get-a-part-2-details-inside-bollywood-news%2F278126&usg=AOvVaw2End3mGRoK5bgsYhdMoMeJ
They planned that twist with a sequel in mind, apparently. Maybe the sequel will provide information about the unnamed girl and the braid without contradicting the moral of the first movie.
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That’s how it felt to me, like a cliffhanger, promising a sequel.
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Oh good! But ugh, more Shraddha
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And now you understand our Shraddha feelings! She’s fine, seems like a very nice person, works hard. But there is this sinking feeling in your stomach when you realize she has been cast in a film.
On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 11:22 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I also didn’t understand the ending but I’m going to hope there wasn’t an anti-woman message in there. The movie was so rigorous about showing how destructive young men can be and emphasizing that Stree deserved respect, for them to throw it all away with a women are deceitful message doesn’t make sense.
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Exactly! Everything else, all the little moments with women, was so perfect. Making Shraddha “evil” just doesn’t make sense with the rest of it.
On Sun, Sep 2, 2018 at 10:04 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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that was a confusing ending and they did not mention anything in the end?
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Yeah! I just saw a news story, they are planning a trilogy of films and were always planning a trilogy. So I guess they thought they would leave the ending confusing and explain it in the next film?
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 9:31 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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But how will that make any difference ?Of course if they continue the story from where they left off in the sequel then it makes sense.Speaking of sequels they actually think there is story worth 2 more movies to extend further?
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I think that’s the plan, they want to do 3 movies fully exploring Shraddha’s backstory, and also the backstory of the ghost. I can’t imagine how they will do that will still keeping a comic tone, but I wouldn’t have thought this movie would work so well and it did. So I will just have to have faith.
On Wed, Sep 5, 2018 at 1:17 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Well it had 2 really good actors in it so their comic timing and well written dialogues had to work..but 2 more movies..i don’t know about that..sorry for the late reply
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Yeah, it depends a lot on the cast. If they can bring back this cast, fine. Even better if they can bring in another equally good but different cast (Nawazuddin, Irrfan, Kumud Mishra, Neeraj Kabi). I don’t want to watch a sequel to learn more about the mythology of the ghost or anything, but I’d watch it for more good jokes.
On Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 8:28 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I didn’t realise I had so much to say about this. I kept typing and typing and decided to split it into multiple comments. So more comment count for you.
I’m not a fan of horror genre, this is the first time I watched a horror move ever, let alone in a theatre. So I kept squinting and blocking the screen.
Nevertheless, I was amazed by how funny the movie was. The humour was both clever and laugh-out-loud. I was impressed by all the leads (Well, at least Shraddha didn’t bother me too much) I didn’t notice this until I read your no spoiler review, but Rajkumar Rao manages to look so young, like an early 20’s kid. Not in a botox way, but in a natural boyishly charming way. Which works so well to sell his naivety. I was hoping for Abhishek to return in second half, because he was hilarious in the first, but I think he was wasted post interval.
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Agree that Abhishek was wasted. Although I bet the post-interval scenes were a lot of fun for him to play. When he was taken, that was my big reaction, “aw, no more Abhishek! he was so funny!”
On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 9:55 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I loved that moment before the climax where a man dressed in saree is told by his wife to stay indoors for his safety. Because that is exactly what women are told everyday. Don’t step out of your house after dark, else you will be raped and it will be your fault. Don’t wear pants, wear a saree instead, else you will be raped and it will be your fault. Women are the ones put through all these restrictions due to fear of men. Here ‘Stree’ (woman) makes men go through it.
I thought the final shot of the rescued men walking with our heroes taking the lead was cheesy, but it is so much like victims of trafficking being rescued. Heck, it’s the exact same closing shot as Mardaani.
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Now that I think about it, all the restrictions are a bit gender flipped. Don’t go out of the house, if you have to go out then don’t go out alone. Don’t respond when you here someone calling after you. Don’t run, just walk forward calmly. All of it is what a woman might be told, right? The rules of safety?
On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 9:56 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Don’t wear short clothes, wear a saree if possible 😀
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About the open ending, I agree with you. I don’t want it to go into ‘All women are evil’ zone in the sequel, more so when they had painstakingly built this movie to empathise with women. The female characters in this movie are already painted in grey shades without turning them pure evil. ‘Stree’ takes men, but only after she lost faith in ‘man’kind after the way they treated her. Shraddha uses Rajkumar for her goals, but her goal is to prevent more people from a cruel fate and she does care for Rajkumar. The prostitute might demand payment from Rajkumar after her client was taken, but she has to feed and take care of herself. Rajkumar’s mother well, doesn’t matter she was a prostitute, she did have a great relationship with his father that he lovingly remembers her so long after her death. What’s even more remarkable is that there is no purely evil male character either, when it could have been so tempting to add a moustache twirling MCP.
Coming back to the ending, I think its option 2. ‘Stree’ was only temporarily subdued and she took over Shraddha’s body. 1 would mean that Shraddha wants more power to herself (because she is evil, don’t go there. Not just because everything I said above. But Shraddha barely pulled this one where she’s the straight character. No way she can’t handle evil) or she needs more power (Are there more ‘Stree’s? The one ‘Stree’ here embodied (no pun intended) the frustration of being. woman quite well. I don’t think we need more) 3 doesn’t make sense at all, because why would she pretend to attempt to kill herself? She already gets to take so many men, had so many chances to take Rajkumar and his friends as well. So why come up with the elaborate, but pointless plan? 2 on the other hand could mean that while she is still around, she no longer wants to terrorise the village after receiving the respect she deserves.
I have my doubts on 2 as well. Well, not enough to ruin it, it still think that’s the most likely option. If ‘Stree’ went into Shraddha, it means that there is more to her. I thought that movie alone captures the back stories of both ‘Stree’ and Shraddha quite well. ‘Stree’ ended up a demon to avenge the wrongs she was put through. Shraddha wants to stop her as she took one of her loved ones. That’s all we need to know for the story to work and it did. Wonder what’s more.
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You are so right, it’s not just that the woman aren’t evil, they also aren’t fully good. The movie rejects that virgin-vamp dynamic, none of the female characters are pure innocent angels, but none of them are fully evil either. They are people, just like our “heroic” team of men aren’t really perfect heroes either.
I am torn between 1 and 2 mostly myself. I could believe maybe that Shraddha had a very good reason for needing the braid. Maybe the man she loved was kidnapped by a different powerful ghost and Shraddha was acquiring weapons or something. So she is still using Rajkummar, but for a good reason. the same “not fully good but not evil” balance all the others had. But 2 would also work, because that final battle played out kind of oddly as though there was some bigger meaning to it.
On Sat, Sep 8, 2018 at 9:57 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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How can it be Option 2? Clearly the movie shows how Shraddha lures Rajkumar into the forests and then abandons him. Why would she do such a thing if she wasn’t motivated otherwise? I don’t think the Stree got into her. She had a dark-side from the beginning.
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I read that as just what it seemed like at the first, a moment of romance and flirtation. Shraddha said she “knew a place”, it turned out to be close to the Stree’s lair because that was where she had been hunting and would know places. She flirted with Rajkummar and then left when it got to serious because she had to complete her mission.
Maybe though, maybe she was using Rajkummar as some kind of bait to draw the Stree out so she could defeat it. But that could still go with the sincere and honest hunter theory.
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I think the ending means that we don’t know Shradha’s story as yet. She has her own villains that she wants to avenge. So she uses Rajkumar for her good? Still not completely evil, but selfish?
Rajkumar, Pankaj Tripathi and others do the heavy lifting wrt acting but Shradha was effective (and pretty). The movie did this well because it flipped everything on the gender. It is a fantasy for everyone to imagine it this way – where women protect. Loved Rajkumar’s dad!
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Loved Rajkumar’s Dad too! What I am curious about with the potential sequel is that Shraddha’s character is the only one with a really “unfinished” story, but also the least interesting character/actor. So either they will create a whole group of new interesting sidekicks for her, or they will have to come up with an excuse for her to return to the same town.
On Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 2:04 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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First and the most important thing – this movie was too scary for me, I had to cover my eyes many times, but I finished it.
It was ok, but I thought it will be better, given the huge popularity this movie had.
For me the ending is 1. Shradha wanted the power of the witch from the beginning, that’s why she was coming to Chanderi every year.
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I’m just glad you were able to watch it! I haven’t rewatched it since seeing it in theaters, I am really curious if it will hold up for me or if it won’t seem as good on a second watch.
On Tue, Dec 11, 2018 at 5:24 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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Isn’t the ending absolutely fitting into the moral you described so beautifully? The village fools/heroes were too sexually awed by the woman that they couldn’t see her true nature. She was either a witch or a ghost(using the same logic rajkumar’s friend used to convince him) hunting other ghosts for their powers. She knew way too much to begin with, including the fact that Rajkumar was the village hero, why else did she choose him as the initial confidant? You really think she fell in love?
Of course that doesn’t instantly paint her evil (badass yes, evil no), that’s your interpretation of it. She probably has her own reasons for ghost hunting or power gathering. That’s not relavent right now, probably in the sequel.
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I really hope there is a sequel! Because it all depends on those reasons and i want them to be good ones.
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