Mumbai, India – When I was little, my mother’s very North Indian family would clink glasses, raise voices, and play card games on winter nights. As the only sober primate in the room, calling the adults’ bluff was a cinch, because their intoxicated minds and muscles kept failing them: they’d place the cards face-side up by mistake, coughed harder every time they tried to lie, or even forgot the name of the suits (“3 of Souls!”) before playing their hand. Shaque: Trust No One is the cinematic equivalent of those nights: the harder it strives to be serious, the funnier it gets. Some might call that entertainment; I call it the comforting embrace of mediocrity.
The seven-episode thriller opens in a Shimla maternity ward. A new mother, Anvita Dutt (Parineeti Chopra), is cradling her newborn named Apeksha, surrounded by family and friends who look like they’ve freshly murdered someone and buried the body in a vegan’s backyard. If guilt were a person, it would sue these folks for misrepresentation and identity theft. But everyone is hiding a secret; there’s no time to be subtle. The camera makes sure we see each of their sheepish faces shooting contorted glances. The Hitchcockian score stops short of whispering “Shaque: Trust No One okay?” in our ears.
There’s Anvita’s husband, Alok (Tahir Raj Bhasin), who gets a shady phone call and steps outside; there’s her best friend Shreya (Harleen Sethi), who also gets a shady call and steps outside. Of course Alok and Shreya are having an affair; their infidelity is revealed some scenes later, but the series has cheated on itself by then. There’s Shreya’s husband, Bhaskar (Sumeet Vyas), whose eyes dart around like he’s the one sleeping with his bestie’s partner. And there’s Alok’s mother (Soni Razdan), who behaves as if she’s a burglar stealing cookies at midnight.
The scene ends with manic Anvita’s baby getting abducted by a fake nurse. Inspector Khurana (Anup Soni) arrives, checks the CCTV footage, notices a few angles missing, and scolds the guard. Investigation done. The narrative jumps to the future, nine years later, where Anvita throws a birthday party for the mythical Apeksha every year, but she receives one faceless photograph of her growing girl by a seemingly generous kidnapper. Fortunately, a therapist tells Anvita that “God blessed you with another daughter, Siddhi, after your Apeksha went missing” in so many words; it’s staged as a surprise to the audience.
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The rest of Shaque is its tagline “Trust No One” in visual form. Anvita grows increasingly cuckoo, convinced that every parent has stolen her daughter; she dials up the crazy when her suspicions land on a new couple in town (featuring Jennifer Winget, as Sakshi), whose nine-year-old girl looks familiar. Anvita is doubted and gaslighted by everyone, but she is no Jodie Foster in Flightplan. Only the cop believes her, because he’s also a wonky tarot card reader whose cards tell her to stay deluded. To be fair, it’s hard to tell Anvita’s sane from insane. It’s one thing to sell the descent of a grieving mother in denial; it’s another to watch a genuinely dangerous woman who stays off her meds and mistakes every child for her own.
