Pari

 Arnab (Parambrata Chatterjee) is coming back from meeting a prospective wife (Ritabhari Chakraborty) with his family when their car runs over and kills old woman out in the middle of nowhere. When they and the police head out to try and find out her identity, they find her shack nearby, and in one of the rooms they find Pari (Anushka Sharma), a young woman chained to the floor.

 Prahab takes pity on the almost feral Pari, and helps her identify her mother at the morgue and set up a funeral. Later, when a couple of shady assholes at the morgue inform a shady scholar type (Rajat Kapoor) about a strange tattoo on the old woman's arm and start stalking Pari, she flees into Prahab's house. He takes her in; Later, in the immortal words of Scott Tobias, they bone.

 That's a problem, because the lady in the prologue agreed to marry him. So we have a love triangle with a spineless idiot in the middle, and an evil cult-like group of goons lurking in the margins - but the biggest threat is Pari herself, who you will be shocked, Shocked! to learn is not all she appears to be.

 Pari's a respectable attempt at a horror movie - Director Prahit Roy scores some good atmosphere, and his script (written along with Abhishek Banerjee) tells a decent, if slight, story. Unfortunately it didn't work for me at all; Blame it on a plot that does extremely little to earn a runtime of more than two hours and change, an extremely intrusive soundtrack that highlights the jump scares in the cheesiest way possible, and a protagonist so milquetoast I spent the movie wanting to slap him.

 Or maybe blame it on all the plot holes (the cult was trying to do what?), contrivances, and horror moments that feel derivative and shoehorned in, or a love story that feels creepier than intended for all the wrong reasons (Pari is basically a child in an adult's body). Also, have I mentioned that the main character, whom we're obviously meant to identify with, is a piece of shit?

 The acting is mostly decent, and Sharma is excellent as Pari; Effects are a mixed bag, but that's not really what the movie is about; A low body count (which includes a couple of dogs) doesn't really allow for a lot of gore, and the movie as a whole feels like a 90's adult thriller with a few ghouls on the margins. The ending, aside from a twist that gets a little too... well, 90's adult thriller, has a couple of decent ideas and some nice moments but it also fails, mostly by letting Prahab off way too easy. That fucking guy.

 
 The search for great hindi horror movies continues. Starting with Tumbbad may have set expectations too high.