Bhooty Call: Cinderella

 Cinderella (2021) is structured as a mystery, with mysterious events being explained by flashbacks as the film progresses.  However, it's not a very difficult mystery, so I am going to start with the flashbacks.  This is your chance to turn back, for here be spoilers.

Thulasi (Raai Laxmi) is a poor but pure-hearted orphan who works as a maid for the wealthy Sandra (Uhhayinee Roy) and her spoiled daughter Ramya (Sakshi Agarwal).  Mother and daughter are both horrible, constantly berating, abusing, and humiliating whenever they need to take out their frustrations on someone helpless.

And they do have frustrations - their secret illegal poisonous snake smuggling business is complicated and stressful, and Ramya has fallen in love with Robin, a foreign (Australian, maybe?) millionaire who goes to the same dance class as she does.  Robin appears to be blissfully oblivious to Ramya's charms, but he's friendly, and she is confident that if she persists he'll come to his senses and fall in love at some point.

One day Thulasi catches sight of a Cinderella dress outside a shop, and she basically falls in love, walking past the shop to gaze at the dress at every opportunity.  She doesn't have a Fairy Godmother handy, though, so she decides to make her own dream come true, working extra hours and odd jobs, with a little busking on the side, in order to earn the money for the dress.

It isn't enough.  She hires local creepy tailor Guru (Robo Shankar) to make her a dress, but what he comes up with is a Sexy Cinderella Halloween costume rather than a gown.  She visits a church to ask Jesus to help her buy the dress, and that's where she overhears a woman praying for a miracle to save her dying son.  Thulasi happens to have the rare blood type the son needs, and she anonymously donates blood to save his life.  The mother tries to pay her, Thulasi refuses, but eventually relents and accepts just enough money to buy the dress.  Hooray!

Soon, Thulasi is at work, helping her employers prepare for a party which Robin will be attending.  Sandra notices a rip in Thulasi's clothing, and orders her to change into something nice, not realizing that Thulasi has a ballgown in the closet.  She puts it on and helps serve the guests, and Robin is instantly captivated, not paying attention when Sandra proposes an engagement to Ramya.  She makes her announcement, but Robin is nowhere to be seen - he is too busy pledging his love to Thulasi.

However, this is a ghost movie, so there are no happy endings here.  Sandra and Ramya brutally murder Thulasi and hide the body.  

Cut to the present day.  Akira (Raai Laxmi again) is a sound designer who has come to this remote area in order to record the song of a rare bird.  She spots a Cinderella dress in an antique shop and decides she absolutely must have it . . . so she buys it with some of her money, because she's not a poor maid. Soon after, she's arrested for a murder she did not commit (the victim was actually killed by an entirely different angry ghost) but after Ramya is killed under similar circumstances, she's released..

Spooky things begin to happen, and Akira may or may not be possessed by the spirit in the dress.  Either way, the ghost has killed Ramya, and a terrified Sandra seeks protection from Saint Gonzalez, who is your basic cinematic evil Tantric sorcerer, but with pseudo-Catholic aesthetics lifted from a heavy metal album cover.

They're making a lot of horror comedies in India these days, which wink at genre tropes even as they make use of them.  Cinderella isn't a horror comedy; almost the entire movie is played completely straight, apart from Robo Shankar's off-putting turn as the creepy tailor.  Cinderella doesn't wink at genre tropes, it embraces them.  

Tropes can be fun, but it does mean that the main plot is kind of thin, and it doesn't help that the movie pads out its runtime with shots of cars driving to their spoooky destinations.  It's interesting enough, and sort of scary, but it really could have been an episode of Anjaan: Special Crimes Unit without losing any key plot points.  

However, the climax does one thing that surprised me.  When Saint Gonzalez's magic proves to be a match for Thulasi's ghostly powers, she reveals that she's brought a friend.  The unrelated ghost form the beginning of the movie turns out to be not so unrelated after all, and they two angry spirits manage to wreak their revenge.  It's a clever twist in an otherwise very predictable film.