The only time U-Turn gets journalism right is when Radhika Bakshi’s (Alaya F) office buddy Divya (Priyanka Arya) attends a call. The dread on Radhika’s face and the bgm suggest that a jump scare is incoming. Divya’s conversation on the side is supposed to be a mere distraction, but I was really invested.
“I just need 15 minutes,” she says over the phone. “Fix the interview for 12.30 no? day after tomorrow?” Real journalism in flesh and blood.
In U-Turn, Alaya F plays a journalism intern at “Indie Times”. She smokes in the rain (“Not cigarettes”), sleeps around, and believes that life is dark and you can never run away from reality. She is also chasing a story on frequent accidents on a flyover because of motorists leaving partition blocks on the road after removing them for a quick U-turn.
Her sources are a vagabond dwarf who bunks at the flyover and traffic personnel. Like any good Hindi film investigative journalist, she has a personal history with the story. Her brother passed away in an accident because of one such U-turn. Events pick up the pace when a guilty motorist, who Alaya’s Radhika approached to interview, ends up dead.
The needle of suspicion is on her. Then it is revealed that all the motorists who were on the list given by the vagabond committed suicide the same day they took the U-turn. Is it a serial killer who lost his family in one of the accidents on the flyover? Is it a vengeful spirit of one of the deceased? How much can one take a traffic violation to heart?
U-Turn has a novel concept but it can’t be credited for it since it is a remake. The logline of the 2016 Kannada original of the same name has intrigued a number of makers over the years. It was remade in 2018 in Tamil with the same name, in Malayalam as Careful (2017), and in 2021 as the Bengali film Flyover. It even has a Sinhala remake and is also the first Indian movie to be remade in the Filipino language. The supernatural is at play in full form in all the other versions but the Hindi counterpart seems reluctant to go the ghost track. It still borrows all the classic—now drab—thrills of a horror flick: the flickering lights, the slamming doors, the flowing curtains, and a little girl singing a lullaby in the dead of the night. As the film progresses, the novelty regresses and we are jumping from one jump scare to another. Alaya still manages to give a sincere and convincing act in the cardboard cutout of a character.
But towards the end, while running away from the clutches of the killer, I felt she too gave up. The film dabbles with a number of genres and ultimately gets dreary. It resorts to style to hide the non-advancement of its plot. Characters are seen smoking while staring outside a window, a suspended cop pins victim’s photos on an evidence board; for some reason, it’s always raining in Chandigarh. In a scene, Aashim Gulati, who plays Alaya’s office crush Aditya, tells her that sources and facts are needed but what makes a story is the journalist’s instinct. Maybe not always.
Director: Arif Khan Starring: Alaya F, Aashim Gulati, Rajesh Sharma, Priyanshu Painyuli, Manu Rishi Chadha Streaming on ZEE5
