Andhadhun ❲Recommended - Full Review❳
If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading and go watch it. For the rest of you who are still recovering from that rabbit-in-a-hat finale, let’s break down the chaos. The film introduces us to Akash (Ayushmann Khurrana), a piano prodigy who pretends to be blind to improve his focus and rake in better tips. It’s a quirky, harmless scam. He plays beautifully, lives humbly, and even falls for the neighbor’s girl, Sophie (Radhika Apte).
Only if you enjoy having your brain twisted into a pretzel and then served with a side of jazz piano.
Spoiler territory ahead—though honestly, the film is so layered that spoilers don’t ruin it.
Let’s get one thing straight: you are not smart enough to solve Andhadhun on the first watch. Neither was I. Neither was the guy who paused it 47 times to take notes. Andhadhun
He wasn’t blind. He was never blind. Or is he just that good at faking it?
Her performance is the spine of the film. In any other thriller, Simi would be a caricature. Here, she’s the scariest person you’ve ever met because she looks exactly like your neighbor. Just when you think the plot is a simple "blind man vs. murderer," Raghavan throws in a detour involving a corrupt doctor, a lottery ticket, and a black-market organ racket. The middle act is pure, adrenaline-fueled chaos. Akash gets actually blinded, gets chased, gets kidnapped, and teams up with a murderous doctor to take down Simi.
He does. And the knife (literally) twists from there. We need to talk about Simi. Tabu doesn’t just play a villain; she plays a force of nature. She is elegant, terrifying, unpredictable, and heartbreakingly lonely all at once. Watching her switch from a grieving widow to a cold-blooded schemer to a sobbing mess is like watching a cat play with a mouse—except the cat also has a gun and a severed sense of morality. If you haven’t seen it yet, stop reading and go watch it
Two years later, Sophie sees Akash performing at a concert in Europe. He’s no longer blind. He tells her a story: Simi died in a car crash after letting him go. He got his corneas from the black-market doctor. Happy ending? Not quite.
As Akash walks away, he smoothly taps away a tin can lying in his path with his cane.
Akash gets a private booking at the house of a washed-up acting legend. Only, when he arrives, the legend is dead. His wife, Simi (Tabu), is cleaning up the mess. And Akash, sitting at the piano with a bullet-riddled body two feet away, has to decide: Do I keep playing blind? It’s a quirky, harmless scam
It’s funny, it’s gory, it’s suspenseful, and it’s one of the few films that genuinely improves on repeat viewings. You’ll notice the tiny details—the dropped whisky glasses, the shifting expressions, the lies hidden in plain sight.
Sriram Raghavan’s 2018 masterpiece isn’t just a movie; it’s a labyrinth built inside a funhouse mirror. It’s a neo-noir black comedy that starts with a simple question—“What if a blind pianist witnessed a murder?”—and then proceeds to pull the rug out from under you so many times that you eventually just give up trying to find the floor.
Tap.