Review: ‘After Yang,’ starring Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja, Justin H. Min and Haley Lu Richardson

March 4, 2022

by Carla Hay

Colin Farrell, Jodie Turner-Smith, Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja and Justin H. Min in “After Yang” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“After Yang”

Directed by Kogonada

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the sci-fi dramatic film “After Yang” has a racially diverse cast of characters (white, black, Latino and Asian) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: After a family’s android malfunctions and appears to be unfixable, the family’s patriarch goes on a quest to find out the origins of this robot.

Culture Audience: “After Yang” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching introspective movies about what life could be like in the future.

Justin H. Min and Haley Lu Richardson in “After Yang” (Photo courtesy of A24)

What happens when a family robot breaks down and apparently can’t be fixed? And what if that robot was such an integral part of this family, the family might be broken too if the robot can no longer be in their lives? Those are the questions posed in the thoughtful sci-fi drama “After Yang,” written and directed by Kogonada. The movie might be too slow-paced for some viewers, but it’s worth viewing for a contemplative story about how the need for emotional connections won’t change, no matter how much technology advances.

“After Yang” opens with a “selfie” family portrait in the home backyard of the Fleming family: Jake (played by Colin Farrell), Jake’s wife Kyra (played by Jodie Turner-Smith), their daughter Mika (played by Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and their human-looking android Yang (played by Justin H. Min), who operates the camera before getting into the group photo. It seems like a happy family gathering, based on the smiles in the photo, but Jake and Kyra have grown emotionally distant from each other in their marriage.

Mika, who’s about 6 or 7 years old, seems oblivious to the tension in her parents’ relationship. Jake and Kyra adopted Mika as a baby from China. Yang is described as a “techno-sapien.” He was purchased to be a companion to Mika and so he could teach her about Chinese history and culture. Yang, who has a kind and patient personality, has known Mika since she was a baby. Yang is treated like a nanny and a family member.

“After Yang” takes place in an unnamed U.S. city in an unspecified future, when human-looking androids and human clones are fairly common. (“After Yang” was filmed primarily in New York state’s Rockland County.) All of the actors in “After Yang” keep their native accents, so the movie has a very cosmopolitan tone to it. Most of the cast members are American, but Farrell is Irish, Turner-Smith is British, and there are some other non-Americans who are in the cast.

Jake owns a tea shop, while Kyra works at an office job in an unnamed industry. The passion seems to have left their marriage, but Jake and Kyra are not on the verge of splitting up. These two spouses don’t have big arguments, but they just seem to barely tolerate each other.

Through various conversations between Jake and Kyra, viewers find out that her main complaint about him is that she doesn’t think he spends enough time with the family. Kyra tells Jake during one of their tension-filled conversations: “I just want us to be a team, a family.” An early scene in the movie shows Mika and Kyra at home eating dinner. Mika asks where Jake is, and Kyra tells her that he has to work late. However, Kyra puts a positive spin on Jake’s absence by saying that Jake being busy with customers means that his business is doing well.

Jake obliges Kyra’s request to spend more time with family, by participating with Kyra, Mika and Yang in a worldwide virtual dance-off competition that happens once a month. The dance-offs are based on the number of people in each group. For example, groups of four compete against each other, groups of three compete against each other, etc. Because this is a virtual competition, thousands of people can compete at the same time.

In this dance-off, groups go online and dance to the same song and are monitored by judges. The objective is for everyone in the group to dance in sync. Any group that has a member who dances out of sync is eliminated.

The movie’s opening credits play over a memorable montage sequence of the Fleming family and other four-member groups dancing in this contest. Some of the people in the other groups end up being supporting characters in this movie. Despite the Fleming family’s best efforts, someone in their group dances out of sync (Jake gets the blame), and they’re eliminated, but they seemed to have fun bonding over this shared activity.

Not long after the family participated in this dance-off, Yang malfunctions and shuts down. Because his exterior is made of human-like flesh, there’s a limited time to fix him before he will start decomposing. Jake and Kyra have different reactions to Yang’s shutdown. Jake wants to do everything he can to save Yang, because he knows how emotionally attached Mika is to Yang. Kyra is more reluctant to fix Yang, because of the expenses involved and because she thinks that Mika needs to learn about death.

Kyra also gripes to Jake that he should’ve bought Yang as a new android from a company called Brothers and Sisters, which is the main company that has the authority to sell new androids. Instead, Yang was purchased as a used android from a company called Second Siblings, a company that’s considered to be inferior to Brothers and Sisters. The place where Yang was purchased affects the ability to repair him quickly, because Yang’s warranty is with Second Siblings, not with Brothers and Sisters.

The Fleming family has a next-door neighbor named George (played by Clifton Collins Jr.), whom Jake thinks is a little weird and annoying. George notices that Jake is carrying Yang, so Jake tells George that Yang malfunctioned the night before. George mentions to Jake that he has a friend named Russ who does android repairs for a reasonable price. George advises Jake on what to do about Yang: “I wouldn’t take him back to Brothers and Sisters. They’re just going to try to get you to recycle him for a new model.”

When Jake goes to the place where he remembers Second Siblings was located, he’s dismayed to find out that the business has closed, and a fish aquarium store is now in its place. Mika is with him on this trip and is afraid of what will happen to Yang. To placate Mika’s worries, Jake buys her a pet fish from the shop.

Jake then goes to a repair shop called Quick Fix, where a repair consultant named Aaron (played by Brett Dier) tells Jake that he has two options: (1) recycle Yang and get a $1,000 discount toward a new android, or (2) turn Yang’s head and voice box into a virtual assistant, and the family can keep the rest of Yang’s salvaged parts. Jake decides to take neither option.

With Mika growing increasingly anxious about losing Yang, Jake decides to go to George’s friend Russ (played by Ritchie Coster) as a last resort. Russ tells Jake that he needs Jake’s permission to open Yang’s interior core. Opening this interior core is is an illegal thing to do, but Russ insists it’s the only way to figure out how Yang can be fixed. Yang is left at Russ’ repair shop for the time being.

Back at home, Jake and Kyra continue to disagree over what to do about Yang. Kyra also tells Jake: “Yang has been wonderful, and we’d miss him terribly, but we’ve been over-reliant on him. We bought Yang to connect [Mika] to her Chinese heritage, not to raise her.” Jake replies, “Yeah, but we spent a lot of money on Yang.”

Kyra says, “If we can’t fix Yang, we’re not going to buy another sibling for Mika. We can’t afford it anyway.” Kyra also says that she and Jake, not an android, should be responsible for teaching Mika about her Chinese heritage. Jake remains undeterred. His determination to save Yang leads him down unexpected paths and eventually on a quest to find out Yang’s origins.

Along the way, some other people play important roles in this story, including a Museum of Technology curator named Cleo (played by Sarita Choudhury) and a young female clone named Ada (played by Haley Lu Richardson), who has a connection to Yang. It’s enough to say that through a series of circumstances, Jake can access Yang’s memories by putting on special sunglasses. What Jake finds out changes his outlook on many things in life.

“After Yang” takes its time in unpeeling some of the layers in this story. There are several scenes of people staring off into space, as if they’re in deep thought. And although Jake is seen occasionally at work, he doesn’t seem to have any employees at his tea shop. It will make viewers wonder who’s operating Jake’s tea shop while he’s going around investigating the mystery of Yang, while Mika is sometimes along for the ride.

One of the biggest flaws in the movie is how Kyra is such an underdeveloped character. It will be hard for a lot of viewers to emotionally connect to Kyra, who comes across as cold and completely boring. Yang might be a robot, but he has more personality than Kyra does. And for all of Kyra’s complaining about Jake not spending enough time with the family, Jake is the one who ends up spending more time with Mika than Kyra does during the course of this story.

Only when Jake accesses Yang’s memories do viewers get to see a brief glimpse of Jake and Kyra in happier times, when they look like a real married couple. But for the vast majority of “After Yang,” there’s little to no chemistry between Farrell and Turner-Smith as these spouses. Even though they are portraying a married couple drifting apart, there’s nothing in the movie that shows why Jake and Kyra fell in love with each other in the first place.

“After Yang” also could have used more of the story to explore family issues when an adopted child is of a race that’s different from the adoptive parents. The only reference to any realistic challenges of interracial adoptions is a flashback scene where Mika confides in Yang about how some kids at her school told her that Jake and Kyra are not her real parents and asking him what it means to be Asian. Mika knows that she’s adopted, but she still seems a little hurt and confused over people thinking that Jake and Kyra aren’t her “real parents.” Yang then tells Mika about tree grafting as an analogy to adoption. It’s a very trite and simplistic way to deal with this issue.

Later in the movie, Kyra calls Jake while she’s at her job to ask Jake to pick up Mika from school because Mika got into a physical fight with another student. Mika was sent to the school principal’s office over this altercation, but the movie never shows Jake and/or Kyra interacting with anyone at the school about this problem or talking to Mika about it. It would be easy to assume that Mika might have gotten into the fight because of the adoption issue, but the movie never explains how Jake, Krya and Mika tried to resolve this problem.

Tjandrawidjaja is very good in the role of Mika, but her character was basically written to be just a cute and somewhat precocious kid. Instead, “After Yang” puts most of the emphasis on Jake as the person whose thoughts and feelings have the most importance in the story, since he’s the one who’s the most involved with and affected by finding out Yang’s origins. Farrell handles the character of Jake with a lot of care, but some viewers might grow tired of so many people in the movie having pained expressions on their faces without much action happening in the story.

The rest of the supporting cast members are perfectly fine in their roles. Min and Richardson do the best that they can with their Yang and Ada characters in the limited screen time that these characters have. When viewers see the connection between Yang and Ada, it will make a lot of people wish that there could’ve been an entire movie centered on Yang and Ada.

Kogonada brings a futuristic, dream-like style to the flashback sequences of Yang’s memories. These striking visuals are among the best aspects of “After Yang.” If viewers have the patience to watch this movie, the last third is the best and most meaningful part of the film. “After Yang” isn’t a groundbreaking sci-fi movie, but it offers a unique perspective of humanity when human clones and androids that look like humans co-exist with people.

A24 released “After Yang” in select U.S. cinemas on March 4, 2022, the same date that the move premiered on Showtime.

Review: ‘The Green Knight,’ starring Dev Patel, Alicia Vikander, Joel Edgerton, Sarita Choudhury, Sean Harris and Ralph Ineson

July 28, 2021

by Carla Hay

Dev Patel and Sean Harris in “The Green Knight” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Green Knight”

Directed by David Lowery

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unspecified ancient time in England, the fantasy horror film “The Green Knight” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few Indians) representing the working-class, middle-class and royalty.

Culture Clash: King Arthur’s adventure-seeking nephew Gawain volunteers to take a life-threatening challenge from the Green Knight, and Gawain encounters many obstacles and temptations along the way.

Culture Audience: “The Green Knight” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in an atmospheric and heady reimagining of the King Arthur legends.

Ralph Ineson (forefront) in “The Green Knight” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Green Knight” brings an unconventional horror spin on the King Arthur legends by putting more emphasis on the human mind and spirit experiencing terror rather than on elaborate and bloody physical battles. People who are expecting “The Green Knight” to be a fast-paced action film might be disappointed by the movie’s slow pacing. However, viewers who are patient enough to go on this “head trip” of a movie will find a lot to marvel and ponder in this cinematic retelling of ancient literature.

Written and directed by David Lowery (who has a tendency to make deliberately paced films with complicated protagonists), “The Green Knight” is told in chapters, with each chapter title appearing on the screen. “The Green Knight” is a filmed adaptation of an anonymously written chivalric romance called “Gawain and the Green Knight,” which was published in the 14th century. Do viewers have to know this story or any Arthurian legends before seeing “The Green Knight”? No, but it helps.

“The Green Knight” begins during a Christmas season and ends one year later. In the opening of the movie, rebellious and stubborn knight Gawain (played by Dev Patel) has spent the night before Christmas getting drunk and being with his lover Helen (played by Anais Rizzo), who is a commoner. When Gawain comes home, his nameless mother (played by Sarita Choudhury) asks Gawain where he was all night. Gawain lies and says that he was attending Mass. His mother, who smells the liquor on him, replies sarcastically, “Have you been drinking the sacrament all night?”

Gawain’s mother is the sister of the king (played by Sean Harris), who rules over the kingdom with his queen wife (played Kate Dickie). Although these ruling royals do not have names in this movie, all indications are that the king is the legendary King Arthur. Gawain might have lived a carefree lifestyle as the nephew of a king, but that will soon change in this story.

On Christmas Day, the king, queen, the Knights of the Round Table (including Gawain) and other assorted people have gathered for a formal court meeting. The king summons Gawain to sit beside him on the throne and remarks that it’s the first time that he’s given this privileged invitation to Gawain. The king asks that Gawain give him a very specific Christmas gift: Gawain must tell a tale about himself.

No sooner does the king make this request when the Green Knight (played by Ralph Ineson) appears on horseback in the court. In this movie, the Green Knight doesn’t look completely human, but more like a cross between a human and a tree. The Green Knight, who tests the characters of men, has arrived to deliver a challenge.

The written message that the Green Knight delivers upon his arrival is read by the queen, and the voice that comes out of her mouth is a deep and eerie man’s voice, as if the Green Knight is reading it himself. It’s one of many spooky touches to the film that Lowery adds to ensure that viewers know that this isn’t a typical knight movie. Get used to seeing a lot of cinematography drenched in mist when watching “The Green Knight.”

The Green Knight’s challenge is simple but one that would strike fear in the heart of the average person. The Green Knight dares any knight to behead the Green Knight. And in return, the Green Knight will behead his killer exactly one year later, at the Green Knight’s Green Chapel. Gawain is the only person to voluntarily step forward and accept this challenge.

Why would anyone take this dare? The king whispers to Gawain, “Remember it’s only a game,” as he gives Gawain a sword to use for the beheading. The Green Knight lays down his axe in a sign of surrender. Gawain beheads the Green Knight, who gets up, picks up his own head, and then chuckles, “One year hence,” as he gallops away on his horse, leaving his axe behind.

The movie then fast-forwards to nearly a year later. Gawain is on a mission to find the Green Knight at the Green Chapel, where they agreed to meet for the promised beheading. Along the way, Gawain encounters various dangers and complications that could impede his journey. And all the while, viewers (even those who’ve read the book) will be wondering if Gawain really will be beheaded, or if his life will be spared if he sees the Green Knight again.

Gawain meets several new people in his travels, including a thieving, nameless scavenger (played by Barry Keoghan); a red-haired trauma victim in a long white nightgown named Winifred (played by Erin Kellyman); and a gregarious unnamed lord (played by Joel Edgerton) and his seductive wife Essel (played by Alicia Vikander), also described in the film credits as The Lay. An intelligent red fox ends up accompanying Gawain and becomes his companion for part of his trek.

The lord and his lady live in a castle with a mute, unnamed elderly woman, who is always blindfolded. (No explanation is given on who this woman is, and Gawain doesn’t ask.) The couple invites Gawain to spend the night in their home on December 21, just a few days before Gawain is supposed to make the Christmas deadline to meet up with the Green Knight. What happens in the home is a turning point in the movie, which makes some big changes from the original source material.

“The Green Knight” takes admirable risks in not following the conventional tropes found in movies about a knight on an adventure. There are no massive battleground scenes, no damsel in distress who’s the knight’s love interest, no kingdom whose leadership is in jeopardy. And although “The Green Knight” has many elements of a horror movie (including some bloody gore), the real fear in this movie is Gawain’s dread of holding up his end of the bargain. His integrity is at stake, as well as his life.

The movie has some strikingly haunting visuals that are times psychedelic. In a memorable sequence, Gawain encounters giant nude, androgynous people (who are the size of skyscrapers) while trying to find the Green Chapel. Gawain tries to talk to one of these giant people as they walk past him, but communication is difficult, and they can’t really understand each other. It’s a very hallucinogenic and effective scene.

“The Green Knight” also doesn’t shy away from references to brutality toward women, in an era where women were treated like property. When Gawain first meets Winifred, she mentions that a lord tried to rape her and beheaded her when she resisted. Gawain is initially confused because Winifred looks like a person who is alive, not a ghost. However, the way Winifred manifests herself in this story—whether she’s alive, dead or somewhere in between—is on her own terms, as if she’s taken back the power that was stolen from her.

Patel’s depiction of Gawain is as a flawed but well-intentioned hero. It’s an understated role where he rises to the occasion of expressing a wide range of emotions without distracting melodrama and while still portraying a character who must present a stoic demeanor to strangers. The other characters in “The Green Knight” are somewhat two-dimensional and/or have very limited screen time.

However, Edgerton’s portrayal of the lord and Vikander’s portrayal of his wife Essel are intriguing and make enough of an impact to suggest that this couple could easily have an entire movie about their lives together. But make no mistake: The humanity of “The Green Knight” resonates mostly because of Patel’s layered performance, which never lets viewers forget that Gawain is a human being who can falter, not as an unrealistic knight who will always put fear aside to rise to the occasion.

Some of the visuals in “The Green Knight” have themes of Christianity versus paganism, or humans versus the environment. Although there’s violence in the movie, it’s not gratuitous. Lowery is the type of filmmaker who takes his time in immersing viewers in the movie’s unique atmosphere instead of rushing from scene to scene and dialogue to dialogue. And there are no gimmicky jump scares.

Many other horror stories rely on the premise that murder victims don’t know when they’re going to die. “The Green Knight” skillfully presents a different type of horror: Someone who volunteered to die at a pre-determined date. Gawain spends most of this treacherous journey by himself, as he reflects on his own mortality, as well as his own morality.

In its clever way, “The Green Knight” is an artistically creative statement of how it’s human nature for people not to want to think about their own deaths. People who have to confront their own deaths usually have to face another fear: reflecting on their lives and holding themselves accountable for their misdeeds and mistakes.

A24 will release “The Green Knight” in U.S. cinemas on July 30, 2021.

Review: ‘Evil Eye’ (2020), starring Sarita Choudhury, Sunita Mani, Omar Maskati and Bernard White

October 13, 2020

by Carla Hay

Omar Maskati and Sunita Mani in “Evil Eye” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/Amazon Studios)

“Evil Eye” (2020)

Directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani

Culture Representation: Taking place in New Orleans and Delhi, India, the horror film “Evil Eye” features a predominantly Indian cast (with a few white people) representing the middle-class.

Culture Clash: A married, middle-aged mother, who experienced domestic abuse from an ex-boyfriend when she was younger, fears that her abuser has been reincarnated in the man whom her daughter is currently dating.

Culture Audience: “Evil Eye” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in horror movies that have characters and storylines focused on Indian culture and family generational issues.

Bernard White and Sarita Choudhury in “Evil Eye” (Photo by Alfonso Bresciani/Amazon Studios)

For better or worse, it’s become a cliché that a great deal of movies with predominantly Indian casts are about families preoccupied with the wedding or marriage of the young adults in the family. Most Indians who follow tradition have arranged marriages where members of the family play matchmaker. The horror film “Evil Eye” adds a cultural blend to this formula by having the story set in two places (the Indian city of Delhi and the American city of New Orleans) that represent the push-and-pull conflict of wanting to follow family tradition and wanting to lead a more modern, independent life. “Evil Eye” might disappoint people who are expecting more action scenes, but the movie is commendable as a sobering reflection on domestic abuse and parents’ fears that their children might be doomed to repeat the same mistakes that the parents made.

“Evil Eye” is part of Blumhouse Television’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse” series partnership with Prime Video to showcase horror/thriller movies directed by women and people of color. Directed by identical twins Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, “Evil Eye” is based on the Audible Original production of the same name by Madhuri Shekar, who wrote the “Evil Eye” screenplay. The audible version of “Evil Eye” centered on a series of phone conversations between an Indian mother and her daughter over the mother’s worries about the daughter’s love life and when she’s going to get married.

The movie version of “Evil Eye” obviously goes beyond those phone conversations to actually show the two different worlds and outlooks on life that the mother and daughter have in the story. In the “Evil Eye” movie, Usha (played by Sarita Choudhury) is a happily married mother who is constantly pressuring her daughter Pallavi (played by Sunita Mani) to find a nice man to marry, preferably someone who is also of Indian heritage. Years ago, Usha and her laid-back and pragmatic husband Krishnan (played by Bernard White) immigrated from India to New Orleans, where they raised Pallavi, but the couple moved back to India some years ago because Krishnan (who’s a science professor) was offered a great job at a university.

Despite living so far apart, Usha and Pallavi communicate with each other on a regular basis. Lately though, their relationship has become strained because Pallavi thinks that Usha is putting too much pressure on her to get married. Pallavi is not opposed to the idea of getting married, but she’s not in a rush to find a husband and she would rather do it on her own terms.

Usha is heavily into astrology and the spirit world, which is a belief that Pallavi does not share. Krishnan is very scientific-minded, but he tolerates Usha’s superstitions with mild amusement. (For example, when Usha prays, she will say something like, “Protect my child from the Evil Eye so that she may be married.”) Krishnan also doesn’t interfere in the squabbles that Usha and Pallavi might have over Pallavi’s marital status. He tells his daughter that he’s proud of her no matter what.

Out of respect for her mother, Pallavi allows Usha to arrange for Pallavi to meet eligible Indian bachelors who are in the New Orleans area. One such bachelor (played by Satya Nikhil Polisetti) has recently moved from Houston to New Orleans. Pallavi agrees to meet him for a casual blind date at a café.

When Pallavi arrives at the café, she sees a handsome stranger in his late 20s or early 30s who’s seated at a nearby table. They make eye contact in the way that people do in movies where you know they’re going to end up being together. Pallavi’s date is more than an hour late, so Pallavi decides she’s not going to wait any longer and she gets up to leave.

The handsome stranger sees that Pallavi has been stood up for her date, and he goes over to her table and asks her if he can join her at her table. He introduces himself as Sandeep Patel, who works in the technology industry. The attraction between Pallavi and Sandeep (played by Omar Maskati) is immediate, and they end up staying at the café while they talk about their lives.

Sandeep tells her that his family also lives in India. He mentions that he used to run with a partier crowd in New York City. And he used to be engaged to a beauty contestant who was a runner-up for Miss India. Sandeep says that the relationship ended badly, and she attempted suicide after their breakup. “She wasn’t who I thought she was,” Sundeep comments morosely.

Pallavi and Sandeep inevitably begin dating each other. He’s romantic, attentive and seems like the perfect catch. He also has enough money where he buys sapphire earrings for Pallavi just one month after they begin dating each other. Pallavi politely declines the gift because she thinks it’s too much, too soon. She jokingly comments that Sandeep can give her the earrings when they get engaged.

Sandeep seems to have all of the qualities that Usha wants for Pallavi’s future husband. Pallavi thinks that Usha will be happy when she tells Usha the happy news that she’s been dating someone special and describes Sandeep in detail to her mother. However, Usha has reservations because she thinks Sandeep is too good to be true. And when Usha hears about the sapphire earrings, she feels even more alarmed.

It’s eventually revealed that when Usha was in college, she dated a fellow student, who ended up being very controlling and abusive to Usha, so she broke up with him. He took the breakup hard and began viciously stalking Usha until something happened to him to take him out of Usha’s life: He died by falling off of a bridge, not long before Pallavi was born. (The relationship is shown in flashbacks, with Nupur Charyalu as the young Usha and Asad Durrani as the ex-boyfriend, who does not have a name in the movie.)

And guess which gift this boyfriend gave Usha when they were together? Is it a coincidence that Sandeep wanted to give Pallavi sapphire earrings too? The more that Pallavi tells Usha about Sandeep, the more alarmed Usha becomes because Sandeep’s personality and the way that he courts Pallavi are strikingly similar to how Usha’s abusive ex-boyfriend was in the beginning of their relationship.

Meanwhile, the romance between Sandeep and Pallavi gets more serious when he asks her to move in with him and quit her boring office job so that she can pursue her dream of becoming a writer. Sandeep offers to pay all the expenses while she lives with him. Pallavi considers herself to be very independent, so she’s reluctant at first to accept this offer.

But the more Pallavi falls in love with Sandeep, the more she thinks it’s likely that she and Sandeep will get married, so she ends up moving into his large, upscale apartment. She also quits her job to work on a writing project that she’s always wanted to do. Usha isn’t pleased when she hears this news because she fears that Pallavi might be losing her identity and that Sandeep might be too controlling.

And now, it’s Pallavi’s turn to be upset because she thought that her mother would be happy that Pallavi is on track to get married to the man of Pallavi’s dreams. She argues with her mother and accuses Usha of being someone who will never be satisfied with the choices that Pallavi makes in her love life. But what Usha is really concerned about is her growing suspicion that Sandeep might be the reincarnation of Usha’s abusive ex-boyfriend.

Usha confides in her husband Krishnan about her fears, but he scoffs at her and thinks she’s being ridiculous. Usha is reluctant to tell Pallavi because doesn’t want to alienate her and she doesn’t want Pallavi to think that she’s crazy. But Usha’s inner turmoil and concerns about Sandeep become too much for her to bear, and eventually something is done about it in a dramatic way.

“Evil Eye” is not the type of horror movie where bad things happen to people every 15 minutes. Instead, it’s a no-frills thriller that mostly succeeds in presenting various dichotomies within a cohesive story that’s not cluttered with too many characters. There are the aforementioned dichotomies of Indian culture versus American culture; traditional marriage arrangements versus modern dating choices; and superstition versus science.

But there’s an underlying dichotomy that’s less obvious: how society viewed domestic abuse before the #MeToo movement versus how society has viewed domestic abuse since the #MeToo movement. Since the #MeToo movement, certain laws have been passed in many areas that give abuse survivors more chances to get justice. Abuse survivors are also getting more encouragement to share their stories as part of the healing process, whereas before the #MeToo movement, survivors were more likely to be shamed into silence.

This shaming is what Usha experiences—not just from society’s discomfort in dealing with abuse allegations, but also the shame she puts on herself. Usha mistakenly thinks she was somehow at fault for the abuse that was inflicted on her. And she still finds it difficult to talk about her abuse trauma to her own family members. It’s this unspoken communication barrier that affects Usha’s relationship with her daughter Pallavi, whom she fears might experience the same abuse that Usha went through when Usha was young.

As Usha, Choudhury gives a very nuanced portrayal of this inner conflict in how much of her past she wants to reveal to Pallavi. Mani is also very good in her role, although at times her Pallavi character seems a little bit underwritten. It would’ve helped if Pallavi had more of a backstory for her past relationships, so viewers would know if she’s the type to easily fall for smooth-talking charmers.

As for Maskati, his Sandeep character really does give off “too good to be true” vibes from the moment he appears on screen, so there really isn’t much to do with this character but play the “perfect guy who might have a dark secret.” Sandeep’s over-eagerness with the sapphire earrings gift is a big red flag that something is “off” with him. Therefore, people with enough experience in life and in watching horror movies know that it’s going to be a matter of time before Sandeep’s true nature is exposed.

However, “Evil Eye” directors Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani admirably keep the movie focused on the mother/daughter relationship instead of going down the predictable “it’s all about the boogeyman” route that so many other horror films take. The movie’s climactic scene is a little melodramatic and hokey, but “Evil Eye” capably and authentically depicts the cultural and familial conflicts that American children of Indian parents experience when they have to choose one way of life over another. At the heart of Usha’s and Pallavi’s conflicts with each other is their fear that one of them might lose respect for the other. And for many people, not having the respect of your family or a ruined relationship with a beloved family member is a lot scarier than any spirit that might come back from the dead.

Prime Video premiered “Evil Eye” on October 13, 2020.

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