Bhooty Call: Stree 2

 Stree 2: Sarkate Ka Aatank (2024) is a direct sequel to 2018's Stree, and it starts with one of the better recaps of the previous movie I've seen.  The town of Chanderi is celebrating an annual religious festival, and Rudra (Pankaj Tripathi) sings a song about Stree (Flora Saini in the last film, this time played by Bhoomi Rajgor), a terrifying ghost that once haunted the streets of Chanderi, abducting men and leaving behind nothing but a pile of clothes, until the town's champion Vicky (Rajkummar Rao) manages to cut off Stree's braid and then . . . treats her with love and respect, which is what she wanted all along.  It's a fun number, and a band of kids act out the events as Rudra describes them, but it does leave out some key details.

Vicky hasn't forgotten anything, though.  He's gone back to work as a ladies tailor, but he's still pining for the beautiful, mysterious, and so far nameless woman (Shraddha Kapoor) who helped him every step of the way, even though his family and friends keep telling him that she is never, ever coming back after she took Stree's severed braid and vanished.  Sidekick Bittu (Aparshakti Khurana) has definitely moved on, and is now sort of dating the hip and modern Chitti (Anya Singh).

Rudra receives a mysterious letter which contains extra pages of the Chanderi Puran, a mysterious history of Chanderi which proved useful in the last movie.  The pages provide more detail about Stree's death, and include a warning that "He is coming back."  Who is coming back?  They find out when a terrifying headless ghost kidnaps Chitti.  It turns out that the young women of the town haven't been going off to the big city after all, they've been spirited away by the new ghost.  And the Chanderi Puran holds the answer - the ghost is the spirit of Chandrabhan (no actor listed because he's a great big CGI thing that shouts and screams rather than speaking.)  Chandrabhan was once the village headman in Chanderi, and was an abusive and womanizing drunk who brutally murdered Stree and her love as their young daughter watched; after rising from the dead Stree returned the favor by decapitating her tormentor.

Chandrabhan is specifically targeting "modern" women, and he has a very broad definition of modern; having a job or a Facebook account is enough to be added to his collection.  The women in town do their best to avoid notice, but a group of them approach Vicky and tell him to do something about the situation; he is the town's destined protector, and Chandrabhan only returned because Vicky convinced Stree to move on, so it's his fault.

(As a sidenote, the women in Chandrabhan's collection have their heads shaved, are dressed in modest saris, and are essentially placed in supernatural cold storage.  Chandrabhan draws a lot of inspiration from the monsters found in old Ramsay Brothers horror films, and particularly the headless demon sorcerer from Purana Mandir, but the movie completely avoids the exploitative tendencies of that era of Bollywood horror.)

There's some good news: Vicky keeps seeing the Woman, and the others eventually see her too.  The group decides that they need to bring back Stree to deal with the new ghost, and to find Stree they need Jana (Abhishek Banerjee), who was possessed by Stree in the last movie.  Jana is currently living happily in Delhi with his cousin Bhaskar (Varun Dhawan), who is a werewolf from a different movie.  They bring Jana back and set him loose in the ruins outside of town, which proves to be an utter disaster.

The Woman has another plan - she gives Vicky a magic dagger and tells him to look Chandrabhan in the eyes and stab him in the heart.  To lure him out they turn to Shama (Tamannah Bhatia), a famous dancer and Rudra's old friend, to perform a spectacular dance number in the heart of the town.  And it's also an utter disaster, ending with Shama kidnapped and most of the men in town possessed by Chandrabhan's rigid rules about gender roles.  Vicky's only real superpower is listening to women, which doesn't seem like it will be that helpful.

Stree 2 isn't just a sequel to the original, it's a part of the Maddock Supernatural Universe, which also includes werewolf movie Bhediya and Munjya, which features a different sort of ghost.  This is not a cinematic universe that requires a lot of homework, though.  It;s an effective monster mash in its own right, like House of Frankenstein but focused on archetypes form Indian horror cinema, with the Ramsay-like Chandrabhan matched against the more modern J-horror inspired Stree, and there's enough context provided to explain the Wolfman who shows up at the end to help.

And it's also an effective monster mash with something to say, since the real villain here is a narrow and oppressive view of society that winds up hurting everyone, including the men it's supposed to be empowering.

Or possibly the real villain is Dracula, since Bhaskar drops some pretty broad hints at the end.