TreeFiddy53

A regular villainous power-trip story told in the form of a legal drama with some important questions at the end about identity, justice, and the value of human life in a system that can sometimes seem indifferent. The film wants to be thought-provoking and wants to challenge the audience's perceptions of fairness and it seems to work for the most part.

The first half of the film was nice, I could watch a whole movie about Chandu and Jabili. The legal drama follows in the second half, which was good in parts but there were aspects of the proceedings that even I was able to question as a layman, but the experts couldn't....? Or, waited until the end to bring up...Not bad enough to complain but overall the film was a decent onetime watch.

The writer of the show Smita Singh said "I moved to Delhi...(When you're a woman and an outsider) the city crushes down on you. Working women's hostel is a strange beast... I wanted to tell a story of what women feel through the lens of horror, horror is something we can't confront... Fear is something that follows you home."

Khauf, when you look at it through that lens, is an amazing show. If you like the horror genre but would like to see something that's just surface level horror with jump scares, this is a show unlike the ones that we've seen before in Hindi. Can't necessarily explain the details but Smita's comments should give you an idea.

Monika Panwar as Madhu was awesome, just like she was in almost all her previous works. Sadly, the industry would never let her become a big name because she's not from a film family. The support cast was great along with her.

The "horror" parts of the show were....decent. The "lore" was confusing, so many unanswered questions around it but if you choose to look past these shortcomings, it's a refreshingly different show; an 8hr show that could have been a great 2.5 hr movie.

For Ajith fans, it's a stupid fun movie that doesn't take itself seriously. For everybody else, if you also choose to not take it seriously, and if you get the million references in the film, this can be a stupid but fun movie. I thought GOAT was a "references ku nadula padam" but GBU is 10x that. If you haven't watched his previous films, watch this one with a group that is familiar with the filmography or GBU simply won't work for you.

Watch this for Ajith, the several avatars of his and for the callbacks. Watch it for the Hollywood + K-Movie + Spanish Tv connections. Arjun Das is a force to be reckoned with. There's nothing else in the film, but that's seemingly all that the fans needed. I can't imagine how much hooting and hollering the fans would have done, this is a sure shot treat for the fans, by a director who apparently is a massive fan for himself.

All that said, when do we stop relying on nostalgia baiting the audience for laughs, claps and ticket revenue? Hollywood and Bollywood is overrun by remakes and sequels, Kollywood can't resort to that, so let's start throwing in everything from the previous movies that the actor has done for callback value, because its...easy audience engagement? "Fanboy sambavam" as a subgenre in Tamil cinema is a troubling trend which is only beginning to take off. Padathula reference irundha OK, but references ku nadula padatha pota....? Where does this stop?

Getting back to GBU - as dumb as this movie is, it's nostalgia baiting done well (not correct still) It makes you feel like you're watching a parody...but it's not a parody...you'll have fun... but because of everything you've already seen before, not for what you're watching now....and yet....everything seems to work, or at least, doesn't fall flat....smh

This was a hodge-podge that I'd prefer over GOAT simply because the film knows it's ridiculous, it doesn't take itself seriously and doubles down on it. The film simply won't work for people who haven't watched Ajith's films before and but I don't think there's an expectation that it will/has to, especially in the 'Hindi belt'. So it's safe to say that if the film tanks, the director at least won't blame CSK for it.