Haiwaan (2026): Built for Oppam Fans, Not Akshay Fans

In a dim building corridor, blind caretaker Shyam Rane counts footsteps, sniffs the air, and pinpoints exactly who is following him. That early sequence, heightened senses turned into survival, is Haiwaan’s strongest argument, and for long stretches afterwards, its only one.

Saif Ali Khan Tunes Shyam’s Senses Better Than the Script Deserves

Saif Ali Khan does the hard work first: he makes Shyam’s hearing, smell and spatial memory feel lived rather than gimmicky. The performance never begs for sympathy, which keeps a potentially maudlin role watchable.

“Saif shines as an actor in a very few moments, ” Deccan Herald noted, and most of those moments cluster in the first hour. What follows is a hero who reacts more than he decides.

The blind-caretaker part has been played before, and Saif avoids imitation by choosing restraint over technique. The chemistry with Shriya Pilgaonkar’s Naina never arrives, and the film badly needed it.

Priyadarshan Builds Enclosed Dread, Then Drowns It in Subplots

Priyadarshan can still stage enclosed, damp dread, and his world-building in isolated sequences shows a director in control. He knows how to make a room feel unsafe before anyone raises a voice.

The screenplay, adapted from his own Oppam, floods that mood with police officers, judges and family threads that never earn their minutes. Indian Express called the result “more miss than hit, more uff uff than ole ole, ” and the middle hour explains the phrase.

One strength is how quickly the film establishes its geography; one flaw is how carelessly it abandons it. Four credited writers dilute the through-line, and a 2.5/5 consensus across most reviews, Indian Express and Deccan Herald included, reflects exactly that drift.

Haiwaan’s Crime-Thriller Engine Stalls After One Great Set Piece

Haiwaan’s core device is disability as tension: Shyam hears what others miss, so threats arrive as sound. Footsteps, breath, a door that should have stayed shut, the building sequence turns a corridor into a trap. Nothing later matches that invention.

The revenge machinery is thinner. Parshuram hunts families connected to the judge, and the film repeats that pattern without escalating it. His backstory explains nothing the audience has not already assumed.

Police procedural beats arrive late and crowd the second half, which feels rushed even at 164 minutes. A cat-and-mouse game needs two animals; here, the mouse runs while the cat stands still. The missing ingredient is threat, the one thing a crime thriller cannot fake.

Boman Irani Holds the First Half; the Rest Are Furniture

Boman Irani anchors the early proceedings as Judge Pradhan, giving the film its only grounded moral weight before the plot swallows him. Casting him is smart; giving him so little to do later is not.

Saiyami Kher’s Inspector Varsha Joshi and Shriya Pilgaonkar’s Naina stay functional, so both performers remain stuck inside underwritten parts. Rajpal Yadav’s Chandu supplies comic relief the thriller never asks for.

Sharib Hashmi and Rajesh Sharma arrive as procedural furniture, and Pahal Chaudhary’s Nandini is an emotional stake with almost nothing to do. Mohanlal’s cameo earns the loudest response of the night.

Atmosphere-heavy crime dramas form their own tradition, and Hindi Thriller reviews keep track of which ones genuinely hold their nerve.

A CBFC Trim and a Thin Opening Say the Same Thing

The CBFC asked for changes to one visual, one sentence and one word, with softer alternatives such as “kamina” substituted in. None of it caused a scandal, and none of it makes the film braver. Politically, Haiwaan argues nothing and risks nothing.

Against a reported ₹80-115 crore budget, a ₹3 crore India net opening day and roughly ₹4.5 crore worldwide gross (India Today, Sacnilk) read as a warning. Trade analyst Sumit Kadel noted cancelled shows and weak turnout, and audiences concurred.

The 4.8 rating across 10, 172 IMDb votes carries the same complaints the reviews did, with scorecards hovering near 2.5. That is not a divided response; it is an agreement nobody enjoys making.

Go if you want Oppam’s tension transplanted into Hindi; skip if a genuinely threatening villain matters more to you than atmosphere. I would wait for streaming, where the sagging middle is easier to forgive and the cameo lands as a small gift. A regular theatre adds nothing.

The wronged-man-under-pressure register that Saif works here also drives Mahendragiri Varahi review.

Haiwaan earns 2 out of 5, skip the theatre and rewatch Oppam instead.

The double-role spy games of Sardar 2 share Haiwaan’s fascination with Sardar 2 verdict from every side.