Gandhari Review
Director: Devashish Makhija
Date Created: 2026-09-03 15:59
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Gandhari Review: Directed by Devashish Makhija and written by Kanika Dhillon, the Netflix film stars Taapsee Pannu as Bani, alongside Ishwak Singh, Mita Vashisht, Swastika Mukherjee, Chhaya Kadam, Jatin Sarna, Prashant Narayanan, Chandan Roy and others. The movie has a runtime of 1 hour and 56 minutes.
Gandhari Review
Netflix’s Gandhari follows Bani and her husband Gokul, who are on a journey with their five-year-old daughter Mishty during their family vacation, which soon turns out to be a terrible experience for Bani and her family. Mishty gets abducted at a railway station located in the fictitious city of Joypurra. In trying to chase the abductor, Bani gets injured and ends up losing her sight temporarily. Rather than being able to get any helpful information from the authorities, Bani is compelled to solve this case on her own. As Bani starts getting into Joypurra, she finds out that Mishty’s abduction is only a small part of a bigger child trafficking business called Blackhole.
The most emotional part of the Netflix movie Gandhari is one which is likely to attract everyone. There is no need for a lot of things to be done to make Bani desperate. She loses her little girl within several minutes, while those people whose help she really needs are either unable or just unwilling to pay any attention to her. This is enough to create a good thriller.
The trouble with the 2026 film Gandhari is that it constantly moves away from the simple emotional confrontation. Rather than letting the quest for Bani’s daughter remain the core of the movie, but it constantly introduces some new secret, some new suspect, some new discovery. Joypurra becomes more and more important, and all I had been doing most of the time was trying to get to know the place and its residents, rather than getting involved in the quest. The storyline about the kidnapping of children is quite significant, but it is not developed well enough.
And it was here that the writing process started to get annoying for me. Occasionally, you get an impression that the movie is heading to tell a realistic story about how vulnerable kids become the victims of organised trafficking. But then the plot takes another turn. The Black Hole is presented to us as a scary character, but its functioning isn’t explored in such a thrilling way as one would expect. There is something to be said about children being regarded as commodities, but the topic gets entangled in the mystery part of the plot.
Bani is a more interesting character insofar as she becomes nothing more than a desperate mother. This transition that Bani undergoes as she loses her sight would make for an interesting study on how far someone can be driven to desperation. Instead, the film transforms her into a practically superhuman heroine. Bani trains herself to compensate with other senses, and ultimately, she starts fighting against others using her body even though she just became blind. While it is plausible to consider that desperation could make someone a determined person, some actions of Bani become unrealistic.
However, Taapsee Pannu does give her all for the film. The character of Bani is frustrated, tired, and afraid, and Taapsee’s performance is especially convincing when she communicates her emotions through facial expressions and body language. Whenever Bani tries to figure out what happened to her daughter, Mishty or denies the fact that Mishty is yet another missing child, her performance is convincing enough. This is what I find most impressive about the film because it makes it worth watching despite the plot losing its way at times.
Ishwak Singh deserves mention as Gokul. It seemed good that the role portrayed another type of powerlessness. While Bani reacts to her daughter’s kidnapping with growing aggression and determination, Gokul has his own approach to finding the truth. The reaction of both characters might have been good for the movie to show what impact a kidnapping of a kid can have on both parents, yet the dynamic between the two gets too little attention.
There is a strong supporting cast, with many good actors, but unfortunately their characters lack depth. Amba (played by Mita Vashisht) plays an integral part in Bani’s life, especially in helping her cope with blindness. The cop (played by Jatin Sarna) gives insight into the investigation. Chhaya Kadam, Swastika Mukherjee, and Prashant Narayanan have some scenes where one gets an idea about their characters. However, with new people and secrets appearing all the time, it is difficult to know their motives.
I did find the myth of Bani and the mentions of Maa Chaumukhi and Magarasur to be somewhat distracting rather than adding value to the film. The concept of linking up a mother’s search with a myth about an individual who battles an individual who kidnaps children is an interesting concept that could have been used to further enrich the plot of the film. However, this concept seems to be another entity that competes with the kidnapping thriller and the trafficking tale.
Indeed, the visual approach of Makhija does establish a certain eerie setting in Joypurra. However, a good atmosphere alone is not enough to establish suspense, especially since the screenplay tends to explain everything in full detail rather than build tension gradually.
In the final stages of the Netflix Gandhari movie, I felt that I was paying more attention to the number of themes that the writer wanted to cover in the movie than being interested in them. A woman searching for her abducted daughter, the abduction of children, the inefficiency of the police, the problem of blindness, action scenes, folklore and an eerie town were enough themes for a separate movie by themselves.
Netflix Gandhari Review: Summing Up
Overall, the intention behind the movie and Taapsee Pannu’s dedicated performance can be highly appreciated, and I agree that there were all chances for it to turn into an emotionally moving thriller. However, the plot of this movie often makes compromises between sense, logic and emotions in favour of twists and more depth in the plot. More than that, the plot about child trafficking deserves more attention than it is paid to it. In my opinion, the 2026 Gandhari movie has a good emotional starting point but does not use it enough.
