THE movie opens with a scene of a father telling a story to his little girl in a cave about a wolf in the jungle. Just then, a wolf appears and attacks both father and child.
We then cut to present day, where Bhaskar Sharma, (played by Varun Dhawan), a road construction contractor, gets a project to build a highway running through the middle of a jungle in Ziro.
Bhaski – as he is called – travels with his cousin Janardhan, or JD (Abhishek Banerjee), to Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, to convince the locals to agree with the construction plan, which will connect with other cities in India.
After arriving in Ziro, Bhaski meets up with a guide, Jomin (Paalin Kabak).
On their way to Itanagar, the car gets stuck in the middle of the jungle, and a wolf chases Bhaski and bites him on his buttocks. Instead of taking him to the hospital, Jomin brings him to Dr. Anika Mittal (Kriti Sanon), a veterinarian, to prevent the villagers from finding about the wolf attack.
Days later, Bhaski meets Panda (Deepak Dobriyal) and holds a meeting with the local village people to get permission for the project. While some agree, others, such as Panda, disagree and express environmental concerns, suggesting that the road be built on the outskirts of the jungle to avoid and save animal habitat and trees. On top of this, the local community are also unhappy with the plan, as the jungle is everything to them.
Meanwhile, there is another wold attack, which kills the people who had supported Bhaski’s highway plan just a few days later.
Bhaski, it turns out, transforms into a werewolf at night, especially on full moon nights. During the day, Bhaski convinces people to support his idea, but at night, the shape-shifting werewolf kills the very same people who supported him.
To help solve this matter, Bhaski seeks the help of a 120-year-old local medicine man, Ojha, who tells him that if the same wolf bites in the same spot twice, he will return to normal.
However, his plan to get the wolf to bite on his buttocks again fails, and the mysterious female wolf that bit him earlier turns out to be a shape-shifting werewolf who has been guarding the forest for more than 100 years.
She reveals that she bit him in order to turn him from a destroyer to a saviour of the forest.
The story has some good points to take home.
It emphasises the importance of protecting the environment, animals, and their habitats.
During the meeting scene, Panda and others talk about how humans are the ones encroaching on animal habitats and not otherwise, and that cutting down trees and clearing the area destroys their habitats.
Apart from the social message, the visual effect and shots of the beautiful jungle and night scene are simply amazing. The transformation from man to werewolf is probably the best scene to watch in the entire movie!
As for acting, Varun Dhawan is just about average as a werewolf and will make you lose interest after a while. Somehow, watching the movie reminded me of actor Taylor Lautner’s werewolf character in the Twilight movies!
Kriti has not much to do, and she is just fine in her role.
However, the supporting cast were all really good, from Abhishek, who provided much of the laughter in the movie, to Deepak’s expressions and performance and Paalin’s memorable lines.
It’s not often you find an Indian movie with this many Northeastern actors, and Paalin Kabak as Jomin stands out the most.
Jomin shines in his character and we feel he has made a bigger impact than the rest of the cast.
In one scene, Jomin tells JD that just because they don’t speak fluent Hindi does not make them any less of an Indian.
But the best acting award should go to the actors playing the werewolves, especially the female one, for one touching scene at the end of the movie.
Some of the worst scenes include the toilet humour scene, which felt more disgusting than funny.
Meanwhile, the songs are just not memorable, and in addition to this, the dance number during the credits roll is completely unnecessary.
Because the movie opened with a chilling wolf attack scene, we felt it would set the tone for the rest of the movie, but sadly, it did not.
Though some scenes are scary or give you a chill, the movie turns out to be more of a comedy than horror!
The movies seem to be an attempt to create something different (or perhaps, something like the Twilight or other wolf-themed movies), but it kind of went off track a little, focusing more on Bhaski, JD and Jomin rather than on the mysterious world of the wolves in the deep jungle (after all, the title means wolf!) but we applaud the filmmakers’ efforts and the visual effects.
The moral of the story is: don’t destroy the jungle for progress because saving the environment is, in fact, progress for mankind. We got that, wolf!
