‘Tu Yaa Main’ movie review: Adarsh Gourav and Shanaya Kapoor pull off this killer collab

This Valentine’s week, love floats in a pool infested with primal danger as Bejoy Nambiar blends genres to create a triangle between two contrasting social media influencers and a crocodile in Tu Yaa Main. Playing out like a nightmare with a message, when a privileged, polished Avani Shah and a gritty, ambitious rapper, Maruti Kadam, collide in Mumbai’s content scene, their calculated collaboration ignites a passionate romance that bridges class chasms and exposes raw vulnerabilities beneath curated personas. Beneath the swag, we discover that both are survivors who want to change their existing profile. She wants to escape her luxurious loneliness, and he is eager to climb the social ladder.

Intimacy forces a tense reckoning on love and responsibility; a supposed escape to Goa derails when monsoon chaos strands them at a derelict hotel, where a mechanical failure traps them in the deep, drained basin of an abandoned swimming pool with no immediate rescue in sight. As rising water and a rogue predator turn confinement into visceral fear, the lovers’ bond fractures under survival’s merciless arithmetic: trust erodes, instincts sharpen, and the title, Tu Yaa Main, becomes an existential question of life and death.

Those who have watched Nambiar’s films over the years, such as Shaitan and Taish, would attest that his storytelling often leans more towards style than substance. Here, he almost finds the sweet spot between form and content. It is not just about the world-building, which he masters; he also infuses it with a beating heart. Based on the Thai horror flick The Pool, the idea of an encounter with a crocodile in a pool is mostly cut-and-paste, but Nambiar, along with writer Abhishek Bandekar, gives it a new colour and context in Monsoon-drenched Mumbai, evocatively captured by cinematographer Remy Dalai.

With a background score that reverberates with the restlessness and ambivalence of youth, Nambiar lays out the clichés of survival dramas and makes us like and subscribe to the cheap thrills they generate. Drawing on the boomers’ memories of Khoon Bhari Maang and Gangaa Jamunaa Saraswathi, where crocodiles play a meaty role, he creates a heady cocktail of the past and the present.

Who would have thought Majrooh Sultanpuri’s ‘Tum Hi Humari Manzil Ho My Love’, an infectious love ditty composed by Jatin Lalit for the forgettable Yaara Dildara in 1991, would find a suitable body 35 years later. Adarsh’s Maruti is a more expressive version of his turn in The White Tiger (2021), and he goes with the flow as he channels raw ambition, class resentment, and survival instinct against systemic odds.

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Literally punching above her weight, Shanaya’s indifference to detail becomes a strength for portraying @Miss Vanity, who gets a reality check.

If the audacity in sharp lingo and attitude draws you into the love story, the antagonist’s unpredictable movement keeps us on the edge in the second half. From the eroding habitats of dangerous reptiles to stories of content creators falling off cliffs in a bid to keep their likes growing, the thriller is rife with references and metaphors. Amidst the mayhem, Nambiar doesn’t lose sight of the relationship’s shallow roots and offers a realistic resolution in a film that wants to suspend disbelief.

Tu Yaa Main is currently running in theatres.