Student of the Year: After Dark review — Squid Game take, Shanaya Kapoor act not enough to save series
The Reema Maya directorial streaming on JioHotstar ditches the glossy, candyfloss romance of the original big-screen franchise for a dark and twisted route. But the premise feels heavily borrowed, the execution does little to make it its own and the result is a tedious, often unwatchable series.
Shanaya Kapoor is impressive, at ease playing Aditi, a girl out for revenge who trusts no one but is also hurting and hiding her own sorrows behind the tough act.
St Teresa — the school where privileged kids are taught how to struggle — is how Shanaya Kapoor’s Aditi Malik introduces the famous boarding school where her twin sister has been found dead.
And so the audience finds themselves back at the address of the elite world first created by Karan Johar in the 2012 directorial Student of the Year (and recreated in 2019 in Student of the Year 2), St Teresa Heritage School. Shanaya is the latest alumna of St Teresa, the franchise having early launched, or done its bit to further the careers of star kids, including Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Ananya Panday and Tiger Shroff.
However, in its third edition, the Reema Maya-directed Student of the Year: After Dark (produced by Johar's Dharmatic Entertainment), streaming on JioHotstar, completely ditches the glossy, candyfloss romance of the original big screen versions for a dark and twisted route.
On a revenge mission
The audience is introduced to Shanaya Kapoor’s Aditi, who informs them that she hates both the school and its people and that her reasons for seeking admission here are personal. Her twin sister, Ayesha, the most popular girl on campus, has been murdered, her drowned body found frozen in a lake. The sisters, as Aditi goes on to add, had not met or spoken in four years. Aditi is also alienated from her parents (Harsh Chhaya and Sheeba Chaddha) and feels they secretly wish it had been her, instead of their perfect child Ayesha, who was dead.
Observing the police’s apathy towards investigating the case and their dismissal of it as something Ayesha had inflicted upon herself, as well as noticing signs of physical abuse on her sister’s body and a missing pendant, Aditi feels compelled to find the truth. She is further convinced that there is more to it than meets the eye when she hears of mysterious goings-on at St Teresa, with a new dean replacing the previous one, the earlier one having been found dead in mysterious circumstances.
As she forces the new dean to give her admission into St Teresa, she quickly scans Ayesha’s gang, which includes her best friend, boyfriend, a rejected suitor who was friend-zoned, as well as the oddball roommate, played by Divik Sharma, Abhinav Singh, Manya Grover and Deeya Damini respectively. Aditi firmly believes that none of them is who they seem to be, and to her, each one appears complicit and a potential suspect.
A new St Teresa
No longer is St Teresa where students spend their time dancing to choreographed numbers. Rather, she discovers that after hours, there are strange activities taking place in its arched hallways.
Students wearing masks and dressed in overalls are designated as players and given dangerous tasks to complete. This is a plot directly lifted from the hugely popular South Korean dystopian series Squid Game, in which a motley crew of players bet their lives fulfilling dangerous tasks to survive for a massive cash prize.
Aditi faces the masked administrator, who tells her that the Student of the Year trophy is no longer for the most awesome kid on campus, but rather for the one who comes out on top in this game of do-or-die. For the winner, the reward is fame and power rather than just a mere scholarship.
Thus begins Aditi’s investigation and as the mystery starts to unravel, the series showcases strategic and toxic friendships, jealousies that take a dangerous turn, and how young minds are manipulated by greed.
The backstory of Aditi and Ayesha’s troubled childhood, as their parents put them in the spotlight from a young age through modelling, highlights the social media-obsessed generation, where everything is for the ‘Gram’. The young characters point out that if something has not been posted on Instagram, how would anyone know it happened? Ayesha’s own Instagram posts, from which Aditi takes clues, become part of this larger commentary on a generation that has grown up with its life constantly on display.
Squid Game comes to desi school
The Squid Game premise, repackaged as a desi young-adult narrative, is a potpourri of borrowed ideas and elements lifted from popular thrillers such as Riverdale and South Korean teen revenge dramas. The series lacks originality; thank God it is only six episodes long.
Shanaya Kapoor is impressive. The young actor is comfortable playing Aditi, a girl out for revenge who trusts no one but is also hurting and hiding her own sorrows behind the tough act. She brings a certain ease to the role, even as the series around her struggles to hold one’s interest.
The ensemble cast, too, does its bit, but there is little else to recommend about the series. The premise feels heavily borrowed, the execution does little to make it its own, and the result is a tedious, often unwatchable series. Perhaps the Student of the Year franchise has run its course and should retire, since it no longer has anything new to offer.
