Dr Piyush Roy examines Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups, exploring Geetu Mohandas and Yash’s visually ambitious gangster epic, its extraordinary cinematic influences, remarkable craft, and the emotional storytelling opportunities it ultimately leaves unrealised. 

American filmmaker-composer Jim Jarmusch, in his oft-quoted observation on why ‘nothing is original’, argues: “Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery—celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to’.”

Geetu Mohandas (director-writer) and Yash’s (actor-producer) much-awaited, mega-dimensional, psycho-mafia drama—oscillating between the guttural and the surreal—Toxic: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups seems an apt cinematic manifestation of Jarmusch’s argument. Inspirations to which the film doffs its hat with admiration range from the ornate aesthetics of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! to the slashing violence of Park Chan-wook’s Oldboy, culminating in a kaleidoscopic carnival of characters à la grand finale of Federico Fellini’s 8½.  

Mohandas and Yash deserve credit for the sheer vision and ambition to conceive a film of cinematic tributes that could have served as a masterclass for any student of world cinema. The first five minutes—ending with a spectacular death sequence against a stimulating circus backdrop, followed by a slow-motion accident with lingering close-ups of a tormented, painted face—is sensual storytelling at its most ambitious haunt impact. It functions as a complete short film and a compelling window into the soul of the project’s vision.

Thereafter, however, the makers seem to have forgotten Godard’s nudge in Jarmusch’s quote: ‘It’s not where you take things from—it’s where you take them to.’ Despite featuring five exceptionally competent actresses—Nayanthara, Kiara Advani, Huma Qureshi, Rukmini Vasanth, and Tara Sutaria; Yash’s passionate attempt at soul-searching acting; a runtime exceeding three hours;

and a five-year production journey across some evocative set pieces—Toxic fails to take you where its opening five minutes promised.

And that is a lament, not a critique.

The story’s greatest strength should have been its five female characters, each conceived as a heady cocktail of complexity, mystery, and cruelty—rendered through a rare and welcome ‘female gaze’. Instead, we are meant to feel nothing for these women, who are stripped of credible agency, reducing them to bloodied fixtures spinning aimlessly in the orbit of the protagonist’s violent journey. Yash’s conflicted alter ego had the potential to be a contemporary Norman Bates of menace in minutiae. Instead, both sides of his character are consumed by mindless violence against endless waves of attackers—men, women, jokers, gangsters—repeating predictable action choreography across diverse locations. Walking and shooting in stylish robes while nameless opponents drop in and out of the frame without motivation might work for a video game backdrop; on the big screen, action without emotion breeds immediate ennui.  

Critics and audiences across the media have dissected the film’s box-office performance—often with toxic, personal commentary. The deeper imperative is to look beyond the fate of a single high-anticipation project and ask why contemporary mainstream Indian cinema suffers a severe shortage of classic works. As a teacher of cinema, a clear reason stands out: in an era of constant screen distractions, impactful future filmmakers cannot emerge if present film students cannot sit through a movie in its entirety.

Though Toxic became a repetitive exercise in conflict after its initial 30 minutes, I neither walked out nor checked my phone. To do so would have meant missing the flashes of brilliant possibility that surfaced whenever the narrative paused its gunfire to explore the protagonist’s tormented psyche. A single act of implied violence in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho remains enough to haunt every discussion of the film to this day.

  

The unmet potential of Toxic reaffirms that the next generation of filmmakers must commit to an immersive film school discipline. Today’s tools and visual tricks are abundant and accessible; what remains scarce is writing that sustains credible drama, executed by actors equipped to navigate psychological complexity within a narrative world true to its own logic.

If, like me, you admired the ambition of Toxic while regretting its missed opportunities, do revisit three films that showcase mastery across each of its three core premises – mafia, trauma and tortured love: Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (for complex gangland rivalries emerging from within and around a powerful mafia family), Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (for psychological tension and psychological collapse), and Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker (for using the circus as a metaphor to reflect and refract varied female ambitions of a mother, a mentor, a colleague and a lover around a central male protagonist).

Instead of treating these references as mere aesthetic mood boards to quote, Mohandas and Yash would do well to return to these foundational film texts—not to borrow their stylistic armour, but to rediscover how deep emotional truth and narrative restraint give cinema its lasting power.