Haiwaan (2026): Saif Ali Khan Deserves A Sharper Thriller

A blind caretaker sniffs a stranger’s fingers, catches pizza grease, and names him a killer, Shyam Rane’s case cracks on scent, not sight. It is the neatest idea in Haiwaan, and one of the few the film fully trusts before the plotting gets away from it.

Saif Ali Khan Holds The Frame When The Script Won’t

Saif Ali Khan plays blind caretaker Shyam Rane with quiet, unshowy warmth, and his earliest scenes with Pahal Chaudhary’s Nandini, a girl he teaches music and worries over like family, are the film’s softest, most believable passages, especially against the shouting that follows.

The torture-and-retaliation fight, staged with no doubles and no CGI, reportedly left him physically spent for two days, and that exhaustion is legible in every frame of it.

His finest beat remains the deduction, naming the killer by the pizza grease on his fingers, and I would happily watch Saif solve that case again in a film that kept up with him.

Priyadarshan Builds Suspense, Then Drowns It In Subplots

Priyadarshan’s strongest instinct here is sensory: darkness, shadow and sound are made to do the work a sighted hero would manage with his eyes, and the ferry crossing and Mumbai street sequences carry a texture the interiors rarely match.

The screenplay is where the film buckles, linear and faithful in shape to Oppam, yet Judge Pradhan’s secret is handled so vaguely that the motive for murder arrives blurred, while the terrace rain changes severity from shot to shot.

Critics averaged 2.5 out of 5 across India Today, the Times of India and Bollywood Hungama, and Rahul Desai of the Hollywood Reporter India put the problem bluntly: “The most constructive criticism I can offer is: Why?”

Akshay Kumar Prowls Well Until The Nun’s Habit Arrives

Akshay Kumar’s body-disposal opening sets the contract immediately: this killer is methodical, casually violent, and never graphic about it. The cat-and-mouse chases that follow are the film’s spine, and Priyadarshan stages them with clean geography. The revenge motive tied to Parshuram’s illegitimate daughter gives those chases personal stakes the procedural scenes lack.

The torture-room retaliation is the setpiece that earns the runtime. Choreographed raw and deliberately unglamorous, it gives the audience someone to root for, something the police procedural strands never manage. Sharib Hashmi and Rajesh Sharma thread through those scenes without sharpening the stakes.

Then the climax arrives in a nun’s habit and undoes much of that goodwill. Shining-style door hacking and a rainstorm that forgets its own weather turn tension into unintentional comedy at precisely the moment the genre demands precision. A thriller this long cannot afford a parody finale, and this one cannot stop itself.

Boman Irani Gives Haiwaan A Conscience It Never Uses

Boman Irani’s Judge Pradhan carries the guilt the plot should have been built around, and his brief presence, a man negotiating with his own conscience, aware his secret has already cost lives, lends the conspiracy a moral weight the screenplay never earns on its own.

Shriya Pilgaonkar’s Naina and Saiyami Kher’s Inspector Varsha Joshi are stranded by subplots that hand them procedure instead of character, two capable performers with almost nothing to play across two and a half hours of screen time.

Mohanlal’s closing cameo winks at Oppam loyalists without adding a single dramatic beat, while Sharib Hashmi, Asrani, Rajpal Yadav and Rajesh Sharma supply texture the film never bothers to justify or even name properly.

For the version of this film Priyadarshan keeps almost making, our Hindi Thriller reviews are a steadier evening than this 164-minute misfire of a movie.

Akshay Kumar Drops The Grin, And The Box Office Drops Too

Censorship left its own fingerprints: the CBFC’s U/A 16+ certificate of 8 September 2026 trimmed one visual, replaced a derogatory line near intermission with “Dimaag ki va