Shaitan Web Series is a criminal web series created by Yatra director Mahi V Raghav. The program is presently available for streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar and has pivotal parts for Rishi, Shelly, Ravi Kale, Deviyani, and Jaffer Sadiq. Let’s check it out.

Story:

The program Shaitan Web Series, which is filmed in Madanapalle, centers on egregious injustice, Naxalites, and their conflict with the police. Three children, Baali (Rishi), Jayaprada (Deviyani), and Gumthi (Jaffer Sadiq), are raised by Savitri (Shelly) alone. Savitri is viewed as a bitch by society since she choose to sleep with a corrupt police officer in order to support her children. Baali becomes a criminal as a result of circumstances, and he joins the Naxals. Baali’s family also chooses to take all measure necessary to ensure their survival. The main plot of the narrative is how Baali’s transformation into a Naxalite would impact his family.

Gaining Ground

The show’s grim setting, more than the original tale, is what keeps viewers interested. The first episode of the series shows the horrors a family has to through, which makes it easier for us to identify with the characters. The movie Shaitan does a great job of living up to its slogan, “You call it an offense, they call it survival.” It has been clearly shown what led the fictional character Baali to become a criminal in Shaitan Web Series.

Rishi did a fantastic job portraying Baali. The young Karnataka actor excels as a crook and makes everyone laugh with his outstanding performance. He perfectly captured the range of emotions found in Baali’s persona while maintaining his intensity throughout the action scenes. The actor Ravi Kale received a significant role, and he excelled in it.

Others who performed well in their parts were Shelly, Deviyani, Jaffer Sadiq, and Kamakshi Bhaskarla. The series’ most recent episodes are intriguing. It clearly depicts elements like staged encounters, the unfairness experienced by some people in society, and how some people see women as nothing more than objects of desire. A number of the conversations are brutal.

Negative Points of Shaitan Web Series:

Many movies have been made with the Naxal background, but regrettably the filmmakers are only emphasizing the conflict between police and the Naxals. We are shown very little of the Naxal ideology and true guiding ideas. Shaitan Web Series fits into the same group as well. There isn’t much that discusses their agenda, save from one scene. Since they are the focus of the program, there need to have been more sequences that illustrate their objectives.

The Naxals recruit Baali’s character, but we never get to follow him on his Naxalite quest. He immediately tries to kill a large fish, and he quickly finds himself behind bars. It would have been preferable if the filmmakers had shown his development. After a while, the show becomes quite predictable, and we can anticipate many scenarios.

The series’ creators have already made it clear that there will be a great deal of violence and profanity. Shaitan Web Series is comparable to a smaller version of Mirzapur, hence it caters to a smaller audience overall. It sometimes seems as though these expletives are included on purpose to give the program a daring air.

Technical Details

The score by Sriram Madduri is really energetic in Shaitan Web Series. An outstanding job was done in capturing the sights by cinematographer Shanmugha Sundaram. The show progresses at a quicker tempo, with each episode lasting, on average, 25 minutes. As a result, the editing is flawless.

In terms of Mahi V Raghav, the creator-director, he performed a respectable job with Shaitan Web Series. The setting of the drama amid a criminal underworld seems authentic. The show is really predictable even if the director gets the greatest performance out of his performers. There is also a lot of repetition in several sequences, and the information concerning naxalism is scant. If the creators had emphasized the aforementioned crucial components and reduced the profanity, the series would have had a greater impact.

Verdict:

Shaitan is a criminal drama that mostly only works in fragments. Its strengths include the last few episodes, the strong acting, and the realistic setting. However, the majority of the program is rather predictable, and a few crucial elements lacked depth. A portion of the audience avoids the series because it has elements of Mirzapur. For those who enjoy criminal sagas, Shaitan Web Series will turn out to be a passable movie.

Shaitan Web Series Review

Crime and vengeance dramas that have become cult classics of Shaitan Web Series, like the first installment of Gangs of Wasseypur, have been the subject of an onslaught of movies and television programs in the Indian cinema arena in recent years, to the point that the genre has become oversaturated. Shaitan is a small town-based crime drama that was produced and directed by Mahi V. Raghav, and it was launched on the platform on June 15, 2023. This show was brought to you by Disney+ Hotstar, which follows in the footsteps of every other similar show. The show educates us on the politics in rural Andhra Pradesh, India during the height of the war between the government and the Naxals, as well as the number of residents who become involved in the fight.

The story of Shaitan Web Series revolves entirely around Baali and his family, which includes his mother and two brothers who, from an early age, have experienced all there is to experience. As a result of their mother’s struggle to provide for the family financially and the many other horrible tragedies that the children were forced to through, all four of them became a version of the devil in order to live in this unfair world. Although the society labels them as criminals, they see themselves more as survivors than anything else. In this intolerant environment, those in authority prey on the vulnerable and the hopeless while playing power games to ensure they maintain their position of dominance. It is tough for the protagonist to find a way out of the situation once Baali takes the decision to participate in the revolution in order to stand up against the establishment. This decision sets off a series of horrible and filthy occurrences. The creators intended to highlight a hero’s journey, but the show rapidly devolved into a platform that glamorized violence and atrocities committed against women.

The program Shaitan did have a spectacular beginning, which provided it with the necessary kickstart to keep the audience interested in watching the show. However, as time went on, Shaitan Web Series grew more focused on the graphic violence, bloody vengeance, and gory gore than it was on the actual storyline. Instead of depending on the screenplay, which was written by K. Ravi Kumar and Mahi V. Raghav, who also serves as the director of the program, the show’s director, Mahi V. Raghav, spends a lot of time emphasizing the viciousness that the characters in the show engage in. After a certain point, the brutal scenes that verged on sadomasochism became the driving force behind the plot. If only there had been more drama in the form of suspenseful situations, compelling conversation, and a tightly written script. It is unfortunate that the back-to-back long and savage sequences of murders cause the program to lose momentum right at the beginning, and there is no way to recover it until the pre-climax and finale. However, the pre-climactic sequence is when the show finally gets back on track.

The aspect that would cause the audience to quit up on Shaitan Web Series at the halfway point is the bad messaging towards women that is conveyed throughout this performance. There are several graphic instances of sexual assault that were filmed over the course of some time. These segments have been preserved only for the purpose of titillating the audience and not to bring attention to the problem of women being habitually mistreated. There is not a single moment in which the female characters receive time, space, or conversation to digest the agony of having been attacked, which demonstrates that the creators had no intention of doing so at any point in the production process. The ladies and the males in their life promptly hop on the bandwagon of retribution and kill the guys who cruelly abused them in order to get their own revenge. It is revolting to see female characters created with such a lack of depth.

What is startling is the high degree of hypocrisy and inconsistency in the narrative itself, where the main character wants to fight for his mother while at the same time he is ready to allow his sister be married to someone who brazenly demanded for a substantial dowry. This is disturbing since the story itself has a high level of hypocrisy and contradiction. After then comes a scenario in which Jaya, Baali’s sister, is verbally and physically abusing her husband, who has recently got married, to get him to leave her. Although the messaging may give the impression that it is uplifting, physically abusing your partner in no way qualifies someone as a strong person. This is the problem that arises when male authors create female characters. They fail to provide them with layers and fail to comprehend their frame of mind. The communist ideology and the theme of oppression do not serve the narrative well since it quickly transitions into a drama about retribution and does not have anything to say about the subject matter. The creators only skimmed over the subject of the Naxals once more without delving into the complexity of the war or the complicated history that is associated with it. Because it was a television program, the authors had a plenty of time to investigate this subplot, as opposed to crafting cheesy side plots that followed a formulaic structure and came to an obvious end.

Both the pre-climax and the final portions of Shaitan Web Series come out victorious and entertaining, as it appears that the filmmaker was now in charge of the storytelling component, and there was no needless difficulty in comprehending what was happening in front of the viewer at this point. The audience was able to realize why the presentation had to conclude in this manner due to the fact that the conclusion was really easy. However, the messaging was problematic due to the fact that criminal activity is not something that should be celebrated in any way. The creators of the film appear to have arrived at the conclusion that the cycle of violence and crime would undoubtedly continue, and more particularly, that children who witness crimes will eventually grow up to commit those same crimes themselves. This establishes a negative precedent and contributes to the formation of a stereotype.

The director, Mahi V. Raghav, was unable to find a consistent tone across all nine episodes of the show since the protagonist and his adversaries engaged in a profane and tiresome back-and-forth during the majority of the episodes. When it came to the implementation of a poor screenplay, it appeared as though the director had nothing novel to contribute to the process. It appeared as though the filmmaker was operating on autopilot, as he or she delivered killing scene after killing scene. Due to errors in the dubbing performed by all of the performers across all nine episodes, any interest that may have been left in the show was soon extinguished. Both the background soundtrack and the sound design were harsh, and they came dangerously near to making the audience unable to hear anything at all. When the creators wanted to emphasize how nasty Baali was, they turned up the volume of the background soundtrack.

The production design was something that was maintained throughout the program to create the impression of the show’s setting being in a more rural environment. The clothing, settings, and interiors of the residences gave the impression of being more faithful to the story than the screenplay did. Sadly, the combination of these factors was not sufficient to maintain the interest level throughout. If only a lot more work had been put into making the plot a lot more interesting, it would have been perfect. While the action sequences were carried out competently, the level of violence was taken to an extreme level. The creators of the program made it clear from the outset that they had no intention of toning down the intensity of the violent scenes including fighting and death, and as the series continues, it just becomes more disturbing.

The various performers in Shaitan delivered inconsistent performances because they were unable to convey the necessary level of feeling across the show’s many emotionally charged passages. They were moving in a direction that was almost impossibly close to the hamming region. Rish’s portrayal as Baali, the main protagonist, was not at all consistent. He was expected to bring up the evilness of being the man who does not bat an eye before killing someone, but he did not succeed in doing so. The female roles, such as Jayaprada, who was portrayed by Deviyani Sharma, and the mother, who was portrayed by Shelly Nabu Kumar, had nothing to contribute as actors because the primary goal of their characters was to get retribution. The role of Kalavathi, which was performed by Kamakshi Bhaskarla, had a few facets, but her character was never given the opportunity to advance. He has demonstrated the ability to be a fine actor, particularly in Vikram and Paava Kadhaigal; nevertheless, he was only allowed to play a one-dimensional role. Jaffer Sadiq, who played Gumthi, should have been employed as an actor because he has showed the capacity to be a good one.

The purpose of Shaitan Web Series was to give the impression that the entire environment was the devil, and the corrupt system encouraged a group of people to give in to the darker aspects of their nature, which resulted in the beginning of a tale of vengeance. This show was not enjoyable to watch because of the upheaval that occurred during the whole viewing experience. Only the dialogue from the original Telugu film has been kept for the television adaptation of Shaitan, which is a lengthy commercial film.

Rating: 2.75 out of 5

Movie	Shaitan Web Series
Starring	Rishi, Shelly, Ravi Kale, Deviyani, Jaffer Sadiq, Lenaa, Nithin Prasanna, Kamakshi Bhaskarla, Manikandan,
Director	Mahi V Raghav
Producers	Mahi V Raghav, Chinna Vasudeva Reddy
Music Directors	Sriram Maddury
Cinematography	Shanmugha Sundaram
OTT Platform	Disney Plus Hotstar