I have witnessed the same story twice in the past 24 hours! So as promised, this is a straight shootout between Bhaagamathie and its official Hindi adaptation Durgamati. If you haven’t checked out the review of Bhaagamathie, then I recommend you do that. This review is going to be full of comparisons and the final verdict of whether Durgamati has got anywhere close to the original. And so I have just finished watching Durgamati on Amazon Prime. Is it worth your time, stay tuned.

Durgamati has the same story as Bhaagamathie. And so I will not be going into much detail. The screenplay is where my interest lay majorly to see if there were any surprises in store, especially for the large chunk of the audience who have watched the original. And I was really anticipating a few twists which would catch me unawares. Alas there were none! Here, the screenplay is a clear case of cut, copy and paste. To add to its woes, the extra screen time of around 20 minutes are added making it a 155 minute long saga. Those additional scenes do not really contribute to the screenplay and could have done without. And the writers have just not learnt from their mistake. What was the need for comic relief here – Infact a scene or two of comedy are added/extended here, can you believe it? Comedy in a horror drama! It just kills the tension. If you have watched the original, you know exactly where this movie is headed. But you haven’t you may end up liking it. And that is a fair point to make.

The dialogues are decent, the BGM again seems to be taken from the original. I really thought the VFX would be better, to be fair it is, but not by a substantial margin. Director Ashok has done a good job but there are absolutely no surprises in store which according to me is a drawback.

The performances are quite good. Karan Kapadia as Shakti has definitely put up a noteworthy performance though you can’t help but think that he has gone overboard in a few scenes. But the man has potential for sure. Mahie Gill as Satakshi Ganguly has really done a good job. It was such a pleasure watching her onscreen, wish to see more of her. Arshad Warsi is good but I really can’t help but think that Jayaram has done a better job and by some margin as Ishwar Prasad. Jayaram was quite soft and natural as compared to Arshad who was a little stiff. You can clearly make out the difference. Jisshu Sengupta as ACP Abhay Singh is the pick of the actors for me. He is such a joy to watch, he totally commands your attention. Bhumi Pednekar as Chanchal has some serious talent and she is simply outstanding. Now it would be unfair to compare her to the stupendous Anushka Shetty but she stands her own ground.

Durgamati is a good watch if you haven’t watched the original. But if you have, I would suggest to skip this one as it is basically the same story with the same screenplay. This is precisely why I am not a fan of remakes especially of popular ones, I rest my case. Available on Amazon Prime.