Nine years after Mohanlal made blindness feel like a weapon in Oppam, Priyadarshan has brought the same premise to Hindi with Saif Ali Khan in the lead. According to The Hindu's review, the results don't travel well.

Haiwaan follows Shyam, a visually impaired maintenance man in a high-rise who ends up protecting a young girl from a serial killer named Parshuram, played by Akshay Kumar. The setup is the same one that made Oppam work: a man who can't see the person hunting his ward, forced to rely on smell and hearing to stay a step ahead. The Hindu calls the core idea "appetising bait" but says the film built around it doesn't earn the tension it promises.

The girl in question is the daughter of a retired Chief Justice named Pradhan, played by Boman Irani, a man reportedly haunted by one of his own past judgments. When Pradhan is killed, he leaves Shyam in charge of her safety, and the police, naturally, start looking at Shyam as a suspect while the actual killer is still out there. That cat-and-mouse stretch, per the review, runs for close to 90 minutes and starts to wear thin well before the interval.

A remake without the original's nerves

The review's central complaint isn't about effort. It says Saif genuinely commits to playing a man who has internalised blindness rather than performing it, and that there's craft in how cinematographer Divakar Mani and production designer Sabu Cyril use shadow and silhouette to build atmosphere. What's missing, according to The Hindu, is the original's restraint. Priyadarshan is accused of following what the review calls a remake checklist rather than rebuilding the story's tone for a new star cast.

Akshay Kumar comes in for the sharper criticism. The review says the antagonist in Oppam worked because of an unpredictable stillness, and that Akshay's version swaps that out, calling it a case of "genuine psychological menace for relentless hamming." It also draws a comparison to his earlier misfire in Nagesh Kukunoor's 8X10 Tasveer, suggesting this isn't unfamiliar territory for the actor going wrong in similar ways.

There are bright spots named in passing. Asrani, in what the review notes as his last screen appearance, gets a courtroom-style interrogation scene that lands, and briefly recalls the tone of Priyadarshan's own Hungama. But Sharib Hashmi, Rajesh Sharma and Rajpal Yadav reportedly can't keep that energy going without fresh material to work with, and Sayami Kher's investigating cop and Shriya Pilgaonkar's role are both described as underused.

The bigger structural problem, per the review, is that Haiwaan runs about 15 minutes longer than Oppam did while offering none of its slow-burn patience, and never quite explains why the killer goes after the father first and saves the daughter for the climax.

Haiwaan is out now. Whether audiences show up for Akshay and Saif regardless of what the reviews say is the only number that will actually settle this one, and that box office read starts coming in over the weekend.