In adapting the story to suit the star, the antagonist loses the haunting, unpredictable stillness that made the original character so deeply unsettling and the narrative its tone. To underscore that he is playing a dark character, Akshay overdoes it, swapping genuine psychological menace for relentless hamming. In trying to contrast Saif, he seems to have forgotten that both characters come from the same socio-cultural space. Like the forgettable experiment with 
Displacing the story without re-rooting its soul no longer works. With the texture erased, the cat-and-mouse game becomes a showcase of Shyam’s skills. It drags on and on in the second half with little effort to justify the motivation of the killer to go after the father first and leave the daughter for the climax. If the original was a slow-burn mystery, the adaptation, which ironically lasts about 15 minutes longer, tastes like an overcooked recipe, eventually standing as a betrayal of Priyadarshan’s virasat in Hindi cinema.
Haiwaan is currently running in theatres
