Breath: Into the Shadows series review : Endlessly thrilling

 

Breathe: Into the Shadows draws viewers in from the very first moment with its enigmatic intro theme and from that moment on, it is an endlessly thrilling ride to the very final episode.

The backbone of the series is marvellous performances by each and every member of the cast and a stunning plot. Abhishek Bachchan and Amit Sadh are the stone pillars of this series, with Abhishek effortlessly nailing the role of Dr. Avinash Sabarwal, a psychiatrist. He simply brings out his best and delivers a performance to remember for the audience.

On the other hand, Amit Sadh plays an unsmiling and short tempered cop Kabir Sawant. Amit doesn’t have many dialogues, and masterfully displays a wide array of emotions while at the same time amazingly maintaining a stern expression throughout the series. I must say this is Abhishek Bachchan’s best performance till date - he is nearly flawless while at the same time, there is an unspoken ‘fight’ between him and Amit Sadh about who will impress audience the most and Abhishek manages to win by a whisker. I must say Amit Sadh is equally brilliant throughout the series. His performance is priceless and his charisma is unparalleled. Safe to say, no one could play this role better than him. I would love to watch more of this young artist.

The support cast is equally astounding, and Nithya Menen, who plays Abha Sabarwal has an arsenal of extraordinary facial expressions, each one equally incredible as her previous scene, and a dialogue delivery surprisingly fluent and impressive which makes it hard to believe that she’s South Indian - this entire series contains only Hindi and English. 7-year-old Ivana Kaur who plays Siya, the daughter of Avinash and Abha is surprisingly awe-inspiring for her age; though I must say her cute face and a sugar coated voice does half the work. Nevertheless, she is like a professional and her innocence is clearly reflected in her character. Hrishikesh Joshi and Shrikant Verma, who play cops working with Kabir, chip in from time to time and do more than enough to justify their characters; beautifully adding some humorous scenes while at the same time adding to the already sky high intensity of the series.

To give a brief idea about the plot of this series, the story revolves around a loving and peaceful family comprising Avinash and Abha Sabharwal and their daughter Siya, and all hell breaks loose when Siya is kidnapped. The couple are absolutely numb and grief-stricken to begin with, but as months pass by, their emotions start getting blunt and they slowly lose all hope of finding their daughter, until one day after several months, the kidnapper contacts them. What follows is a masterpiece and is absolutely breathtaking. While series is 12-episodes long, it looks long only on paper! Once you sit down to watch this, you would want to watch all the episodes in one go, such is its thrill and captivity. The dialogues are well written and the stellar character development would give almost every other well written movie/series a run for its money. The last episode is the best partly due to the terrific buildup and partly due to what’s at stake. It finally leads us to a cliffhanger, which is one of the many elements of any fantastic series. Moving on, I found all the background scores of this movie particularly captivating. Each one captures the essence of the series - thrilling, spooky, dark and menacing - with little difficulty. Overall, this web series is one of the best I’ve watched. It’s fabulous to say the least, with barely any loopholes. Watch this to get your mind blown and to breathe some life into this boring quarantine.