Pooja Meri Jaan Review: A Messy, Gripping Thriller

Pooja Dogra (Mrunal Thakur) is a young woman living her life. Aniket Srivastav (Vikram Singh Chauhan) is a man who wants to be part of it. When she says no, he doesn't take it well. Then he takes his own life - and the narrative immediately shifts. Suddenly, Pooja isn't a woman who exercised a basic right; she's the subject of an investigation, a social-media trial, and the grief-stricken rage of Aniket's mother (Suparna Marwah).

Enter Sana (Huma Qureshi), a lawyer and Pooja's friend, who starts pulling at threads. What was the actual texture of Pooja and Aniket's relationship? Was there more than Pooja is saying? Was there less than Aniket's family believes? Gulati and his co-writers weave a 117-minute web that touches on obsession, consent, the weaponization of male fragility, and the sheer exhausting bureaucracy of being a woman who said no.

The film's greatest asset is Mrunal Thakur. She doesn't play Pooja as a martyr or a saint. She plays her as a person - annoyed, defensive, occasionally unreliable, but never less than human. There's a scene where Pooja is asked to explain why she didn't block a number, and Thakur's face cycles through fury, shame, and resignation in three seconds flat. It is the kind of performance that will make you forget the plot holes.

Huma Qureshi's Sana is the audience surrogate, and she's excellent as a woman who genuinely wants to believe her friend but keeps finding inconvenient facts. The sisterhood here isn't saccharine; it's complicated. Vijay Raaz drops in as Jatin, a world-weary investigator type, and as always, he steals every scene he's in without breaking a sweat.

Where the film falters is in its third act. Pooja Meri Jaan wants to be a thriller and a social thesis, and Gulati sometimes lets the thesis win. Characters start explaining the film's themes to each other in dialogue that feels like a panel discussion. The pacing dips around the 90-minute mark, and the resolution - while bold - will divide audiences. Some will call it a cop-out; others will call it the only honest ending possible. The TMDb rating currently sits at 0/10 simply because no one has voted yet. Ignore that. This isn't a perfect film, but it's certainly not a zero.

Pros:

• Mrunal Thakur delivers a career-best performance, full stop.
• The film respects Pooja's right to say no without making her a flawless victim.
• Vijay Raaz and Huma Qureshi add heft to every scene they're in.
• The Hindi dialogue is sharp and naturalistic, and the film never feels like a dubbed import.

Cons:

• The third act gets preachy, telling instead of showing.
• Some supporting characters, especially Aniket's mother, are underwritten.
• The runtime drags in the middle stretch.
• The ending will frustrate viewers who want a clean answer.

Pooja Meri Jaan is not a date movie. It's a "call your best friend afterward and talk for two hours" movie. It asks hard questions about obsession and consent without pretending the answers are easy. The film has rough edges - a saggy middle, a heavy-handed final act - but Thakur's performance alone is worth the ticket price. In a Bollywood landscape increasingly dominated by spectacle, this is a small, prickly, necessary film. See it with someone you trust, and be ready to argue.