‘Maa’ Movie Review: Kajol Battles Evil, but the Real ‘Horror’ Is the CGI! (LatestLY Exclusive)

Maa Movie Review: Ajay Devgn delivered a hit last year with Shaitaan, a supernatural thriller about a parent who’ll do anything to save his daughter from evil, who controls teenage girls. One year on, he’s back as producer with Maa, a horror-thriller in which Kajol plays - wait for it - a parent willing to go to any lengths to protect her daughter from, well, evil who controls teenage girls. Maa is directed by Vishal Furia, who first made waves with the Marathi chiller Lapachhapi, fusing jump scares with the real-world horror of female infanticide. He then remade it in Hindi (of course) as Chhorii, which was decent, and followed that with an awful sequel. ‘Maa’: Is Ajay Devgn Secretly Directing Kajol’s Horror Movie? Viral Pics Spark Speculation!

Maa shares much of the Chhorii DNA: a supernatural threat targeting little girls, murderous patriarchy, a village full of wrong ‘uns, and a fierce female lead determined to save the day. This time the budget is beefier and the ambition grander - apparently the film must launch a cinematic universe (yes, groan away). It is spooky in patches, but whenever a scene should have had me hiding behind my fingers, I found myself wincing - sometimes at the absurdity, sometimes at the filmmaking.

'Maa' Movie Review - The Plot

An ancestral mansion in Chandrapur is cursed: every girl born under its roof must be sacrificed to keep evil at bay. The last heir, Shuvankar (Indraneil Sengupta), has escaped to the city with his wife Ambika (Kajol) and their daughter Shweta (Kherin Sharma). He’s kept Shweta’s existence secret from his family, and the girl herself has no idea why Chandrapur is off-limits.

Watch the Trailer of 'Maa':

Inevitably, circumstances drag Ambika and Shweta back to the village, where the child’s very presence alarms the locals. Ambika soon witnesses bizarre goings-on - little girls spirited away for days by a shadowy entity. It doesn’t take long to realise the real target is her own daughter.

'Maa' Movie Review - Mythos Meets Horror

The message is plain: a mother will become a force of nature - Kali incarnate, even - to protect her child. Think Not Without My Daughter spliced with CGI creepers, a tree monster and the creepiest forest brats imaginable. Rooted in Bengali folklore, two motifs dominate: blood-red hues and the fierce iconography of Kali.

Yet, like every Indian horror film that drags a deity into the finale, Maa trips over a theological pothole: if Kali is as omnipotent as the film insists, why didn’t she intervene before generations of babies were slaughtered? Did the Goddess need Kajol’s star-power as a catalyst?

To give credit where due to Maa, the movie does a solid job of setting up its mouldy, menacing world. Mythology, folklore and horror intertwine in ways that keep you watching. The above theological question aside - the blend of mythology, folklore and horror creating a fascinating narrative that unfailingly incites interest, most evident in the foreboding prologue scene set 40 years before the main events. Unfortunately, its VFX keeps crashing the party.

'Maa' Movie Review - VFX is Disappointing

This is now a famous trivia that a reason why Steven Spielberg's Jaws worked was that he kept the shark offscreen most of the time, creating a sense of dread by mere suggestion of its presence (and John Williams' foreboding score). That was not out of design - he simply had a malfunctioning shark animatronic, and he had to do the best with what he had.

For Maa, the malfunctioning shark is its VFX. It doesn't take much time for you to realise that you will be watching the ghostly portions with a mouth-gape, wondering WTF they were cooking in that department. The first big kill, which comes some 20 minutes into the movie, is meant to shock and scare you, but lands like slapstick thanks to its cartoonish CGI in trying to pull off fake creepers.

That’s doubly embarrassing when you recall that, decades ago and on a shoestring, Sam Raimi made demonic vines and trees terrifying with practical effects in The Evil Dead. It’s 2025 and we still can’t muster convincing CGI for similar scares. And you are not helping your case when you even include a tracking shot of the unseen demon rushing through the forest shown from its POV, which is now considered one of Evil Dead's famous scenes. Shaitaan Movie Review: R Madhavan's Sinister Act Holds Ajay Devgn-Jyotika's Spooky Thriller Together Before It's Undone By a Weak Finale.

Perhaps aware of this, Furia keeps the first half atmospheric: shadowy forests, jump scares and the usual Indian-horror staples - peekaboo ghosts who watch people sleep, blankets yanked off sleepers, the madman dispensing cryptic warnings before being bumped off, and so on.

The haunted forest abode of the demonic entity, established in the first half with its hanging vines, faces on trees, and disembodied infant wails, could have been properly chilling if not for flat lighting that drains the menace. The editing also should have been better - a song is jarringly added before the second act, and normal conversation scenes have distractingly more cuts than they needed.

Still, the first half is serviceable; it’s the second that truly tests your patience.

'Maa' Movie Review - A Haphazard Second Half

Alas, the filmmakers can’t resist flexing their VFX muscles this time too heavily, and what's more, they do so by borrowing liberally from one of the biggest shows of our time, Stranger Things. It took me some time to realise that the villain’s lair is basically the Upside Down, while the creature itself looks like Vecna cross-pollinated with an Ent from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Some frames even scream AI-generated, which yanks you straight out of the film.

Shoddy CGI and familiar visuals aren’t the only sin - even if they deeply impact even a good action scene, like the sequence in which Ambika and Shweta are attacked inside their car, which tries an interesting in-car POV, but the rest of the staging undermines the tension.

It is the screenplay (Saiwyn Quadras) that heavily falters here, buckling under predictable twists and overstuffed lore. By the time we reach the climactic showdown - an undercooked clash drowned in bogus Upside Down visuals - whatever suspense remained has leaked away like water from a dripping tap. The film shoehorns in messages about patriarchy and infanticide, but unlike Lapachhapi or Chhorii, they feel muddled under the weight of its own confused mythology (and a biblical parallel to Abraham and Isaac?).

'Maa' Movie Review - The Performances

Performance-wise, Kajol carries the film and is compelling throughout, barring a flat moment in the finale that owes more to direction than her acting. Kherin Sharma is engaging as young Shweta, while Roopkatha Chakraborty impresses as Deepika, the house-help’s daughter.

Ronit Roy turns up as Joydev, the sarpanch family friend, sporting a heavily wobbly Bengali accent that automatically comes with a 'red flag' warning. Indraneil Sengupta, Dibyendu Bhattacharya, Jitin Gulati, Surjyasikha Das and Gopal Singh round out the cast, with Neeraj Kabi dropping in for a fleeting cameo.

PS: There’s a mid-credits scene linking Maa to the Shaitaan universe, neatly illustrating why most Indian cinematic universes feel forced: rather than letting connections grow organically, they’re bolted on simply because everyone else is doing it.

'Maa' Movie Review - Final Thoughts

In Maa, I want to believe there’s a decent horror film buried somewhere beneath the layers of derivative world-building, wobbly CGI, and clunky messaging - but it never quite claws its way out of that rubble. While the film tries to blend myth, motherhood and horror into a cinematic universe starter-pack, what we’re left with is a visually noisy, narratively confused thriller that occasionally flirts with fear but mostly fumbles it.

(The opinions expressed in the above article are of the author and do not reflect the stand or position of LatestLY.)

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 27, 2025 09:01 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).