Chhorii
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Chhorii
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this movie.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Chhorii is a 2021 Indian horror movie in which a pregnant woman must save herself and her unborn child from traditional beliefs and mysterious forces. Expect horror movie imagery and scary music throughout. Some disturbing scenes include a woman being set on fire, a baby being dropped into a well, the dead bodies of kids, and women stabbing their wombs with a knife (heard but not shown). A woman is shown being beaten with a rod by her husband. A man falls on a knife and dies; some blood. Man beaten until bloodied and bruised by henchmen. Man beaten with a rod and knocked out. Woman shown tied up and forced to experience disturbing hallucinations. Characters smoke from hookah pipes -- these scenes include subtitles that warn the viewer of the health hazards of smoking. Overall, the movie is trying to make a comment on the epidemic of female infanticide as a result of traditional superstitions concerning patrilineal descent in India, and on a more global scale, the increase in violence against women in recent years.
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What's the Story?
In CHHORII, Sakshi (Nushrratt Bharuccha) is in her eighth month of pregnancy while working as a teacher in an NGO. One night, she awakens to find her husband Hemant Saurabh Goyal) being beaten up in their living room by goons who tell him that he has 24 hours to pay back the money he borrowed to start a new business. Unable to come up with the money in time, Hemant and Sakshi decide to go into hiding until he can figure out a way to pay back the money. Their driver, Kajla, offers to take them to his village, 300 kilometers away, hidden in sugarcane fields. They arrive, and Saskshi meets Kajla's wife Devi, an orthodox and superstitious woman who believes in traditional beliefs concerning the role of women, beliefs that the modern and urban Sakshi disagrees with. Even so, Sakshi bonds with Devi, but while Hemant has returned to the city to make things right, Sakshi begins seeing three kids who beckon her to play with them. Devi orders Sakshi to ignore them at all costs. Sakshi also encounters Rani, the ex-wife of Devi's oldest son, who lost her child during childbirth and no longer talks even as she's verbally berated and abused by Devi. As the three kids continue to appear and beckon Saskshi to play with them, she begins to learn the horrible truth about what really happened with the wives and kids of Devi's oldest son, and it's something far more sinister than the witchcraft that Devi claims is the reason behind it all. Sakshi must find a way to learn what's really going on in this mysterious village and save herself and her unborn child.
Is It Any Good?
This is a horror movie with a thoughtful and timely message, but also one that gets lost in cliches and excess. Chhorii has a unique third act filled with hallucinations and disturbing flashbacks and time jumps that's enjoyable in and of itself before everything is revealed in the end, but the journey to get to that point is filled with too-convenient plot points and an overreliance on horror elements that have been cliched for at least 20 years. Less than 30 minutes into it, the overdependence on "foreboding" background music filled with clanks and shrieks, paired with exaggerated sounds like water dripping, grows tiresome. It also clocks in at two hours and ten minutes, and there are enough redundant scenes to make the case that this could be at least 30 minutes shorter.
Somewhere in all of the jump scares, hallucinations, and shrieky background music is a message on female infanticide and violence against women. While this is all part of the "big reveal" at movie's end, it's obvious to anyone paying attention that this is the message the movie is trying to convey through this story. That message does come through, even with the PSA at the end concerning the epidemic of female infanticide in traditional and superstitious cultures and even if the story itself ends up being a little too on the nose no matter how chaotic it gets. The ambition to convey a message like this in a genre that often sticks to the basic "gore for gore's sake" formula of storytelling is admirable, but the cliches and the excess, more often than not, clouds rather than amplifies this message
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about horror movies like Chhorii. How is this similar to and different from other horror movies you've seen?
How does the movie use the story to make comments on female infanticide and violence against women?
Was the violence and horror imagery necessary to the movie, or did it seem excessive? Why?
Movie Details
- On DVD or streaming: November 26, 2021
- Cast: Nushrratt Bharuccha, Mita Vashisht, Saurabh Goyal
- Director: Vishal Furia
- Studio: Amazon
- Genre: Horror
- Topics: Monsters, Ghosts, and Vampires
- Run time: 129 minutes
- MPAA rating: NR
- Last updated: February 28, 2022
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