The film is a sequel to a hit thriller led by Taapsee Pannu and Vikrant Massey. The now series follows a couple who are obsessed with recreating stories from the books of an infamous late author Dinesh Pandit. The fun part about the books is that the law never wins, and our heroes are never on the right side of the law.
The first film explored Rani and Rishu's toxic love story, here their struggle to reunite continues but it ends rather a bit too straightforward. The film begins with a bit of a recap and what Rishu and Rani have been up to after the first film. They are still running away from the cops, meeting at hidden spots, living under the radar and trying to reunite.
Meanwhile, both have other prospects aka love interests hovering around them, but this time the two are loyal to each other, for now. They have a clear plan, to hind for another two months and pay off an agent who will help ship them off to a different country. However, things don't go as planned with Montu Chacha shows up to uncover the truth about Neel's disappearance (aka murder in the first film).
The two have much to lose, from each other's love and support to real consequences like jail for the rest of their lives. Rishu is convinced Montu Chacha will not leave them alone unless either one is caught or dead but Rani has the perfect solution for it, unfortunately, the situation gets worse instead of improving and the chaos ultimately ends with a climax full of long narration. Taapsee Pannu brings back her sexy avatar back from the first movie, while we get to see a new version of Vikrant Massey.
The two have great chemistry together, as well as with Sunny Kaushal's Abhimanyu. The new character adds a new charm to the film, but it isn't as impactful as the original story. While the first film's screenplay had layers to uncover, the sequel spent more of the time setting those layers for the plot and the characters.
While the first film explored dynamics between characters and their emotional transformations, here we rigid characters defined by their past. The thrill of the unknown from the first film is somewhat missing. With a predictable climax, unfortunately, Phir Aayi Hasseen Dillruba does little to explore the situation with the audience but decides to drop all the information in a lazy narrative format.
The direction by Jayprad Desai is substantially different from Vinil Mathew who directed the first film. The vision and the treatment of the characters are more about the worldview than their personal experiences in the sequel; though the latter was the USP for the first film. The cinematographer has also changed from Jaya Krishna Gummadi to Vishal Sinha for the sequel and it shows.
While the first film had a very rich and unique tone, the follow-up is more focused on the technical commercial feel of its shots and characters. What saves the experience is the rare details about the film and one plot point revealed at the end bringing hope for the next release in the series. Overall, the original raised the bar so much, that the sequel's info-dump climax takes away all the fun from its runtime.
Though the runtime feels long, the makers do not waste much time in setting the tone and kick off with the real deal, moving the story forward with a good background score and tracklist..
