"A borderline genius parody of a B-Grade cliché horror flicks by using caricatures of tropes to produce a high-quality comedy with a weak story resolution."
Shaitaan Haveli is 2018 dark comedy, horror, drama parody series on Amazon Prime. As part of one of the originals, it goes up against several brilliant Hindi series when fighting for the attention of a viewer. Shaitaan Haveli puts together some of the most typical tropes and archetypes available and somehow makes it work. It's pretty good that most of this cast who have otherwise held roles as support cast members here get main roles. It gives the series this "raw" charm in a way.
Shaitaan Haveli does an insanely good job by using caricatures instead of characters like full of the typical "bade baap ki bigdi aulaad" or "struggling actor who is actually good but just had to be discovered" archetypes rampant in Indian media. The intentional usage of having archetypes to make up the entire cast is fucking genius to have made this work. It's a commentary among commentaries, what a fucking experience literally every moment of this show is. Honestly, the fact that these actors never broke character while acting in those roles genuinely makes it worthwhile. Everything became that much funnier when the plot started to unravel slowly and the horror story became a reality.
One weak link is the story resolution. The pay off really isn't that great. There was a good amount of character establishment and a ton of interactions that set up the final stage. Sadly, maybe here's where I expected the series to maintain their high ish level of direction. I still think the finale was funny but I don't think it was particularly good. This is what pulls the story down. They had 3 whole episodes to pull it off and they messed it up. It played out a bit too much like a shitty B grade horror movie. The greatest strength of this series became what stopped the series from being truly a memorable one - the brilliant usage of caricatures.
Other than being a show with failed potential, a "what could've been", Shaitaan Haveli did a lot of things right and some things wrong. I don't expect it to have a second season but if it does, I would like to watch where it goes. To use an old concept sets up a great base which Shaitaan Haveli exploited. Where the characters have been established, I reckon the future can be good. If they can take what they did well and learn from their mistakes, we could be in for a fun show with Indian occult elements.
Normality is to come across a series that could've been far better than it truly was. Reality is accepting that it maybe was never that good. In the case of Shaitaan Haveli though, it was a series that did a lot of things brilliantly but failed to execute the one thing that could make or break its niche popularity. To make a parody already eliminates a great chunk of viewers. To make a parody on concept that isn't unique is even worse in that case. Now, when you do have the audience you want who has an interest in bad horror and comedy, you better deliver. And they did! Sorta, at least. Shaitaan Haveli was a fun experience that should've been so so much more.
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