Vidya Balan's Kahaani, when released in 2012 was a success at the box office. As the time passed, the film gathered a cult following. And with that, a sequel was inevitable. Kahaani 2 - Durga Rani Singh has nothing in connection to the first part except for Vidya. In addition to the actress, the film also stars Arjun Rampal and is written and directed by Sujoy Ghosh.

After the debacles of Ghanchakkar and Humari Adhuri Kahaani, Vidya Balan is back and how! Director Sujoy Ghosh teams up with the actor four years after the blockbuster Kahaani and the result is an equally impressive, edge-of-the-seat suspense drama that keeps you hooked.

The basic ingredients which are now familiar with Sujoy Gosh's films - kidnapping, diaries (or tapes) - TE3N, flash back, memories, loss, hunt, guilt, a child and of course Kolkata (Bengal - in a way similar to Delhi, Punjabis and Punjab we have observed in YRF's productions) is twined with a shocking and disturbing twist (more about this twist later) certainly making this exercise deserving of the second installment on paper.

First things first. Kahaani 2 isn't a sequel. Director Sujoy Ghosh wants to make a franchise out of the popular Kahaani brand and this is just another installment of the franchise. Though what Vidya Bagchi did with her life after the culmination of Kahaani would have made a wonderful film by itself, this isn't it. So exit Vidya Bagchi, enter Vidya Sinha (Vidya Balan). She's a middle class single mother in Chandannagar, a suburb lying 35 kms North of Kolkata. She's seen fussing over her teenaged daughter (Tunisha Sharma), who is paralysed from waist down.

The uniformly dark, grim and grainy texture of this film, and a slightly pacey background score kicking in right from the first scene, provides you an adequate sense of anticipation, soon as you block your seat in the theatre. And I don't mean this in a 'Run Lola Run' music-video kinda way. But more like, as an audience, you perennially wish to know what happens next. So the set-up is sorted. Which, given this film's genre (a suspense-thriller), is half the battle won anyway.

If you believe the end maketh the movie, then writer-director Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh falls strictly in the category of the not-extraordinary. The second instalment in this series starring Vidya Balan features nothing like the surprise that punched us in the collective gut in Kahaani's climax back in 2012.

Almost five years since Sujoy Ghosh and Vidya Balan gifted us the gem called Kahaani, the two are here with a sequel. But if you expect a thriller as riveting as Kahaani, Kahaani 2 won't live up to your high expectations. Titled Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh, the sequel is the story of Vidya Sinha (Vidya Balan) and her daughter Minni (Tunisha Sharma), who live in Chandan Nagar. The story is set in West Bengal, from Kalimpong to Kolkata, and Chandan Nagar in between; Bengal and its people, everything is captured well on camera.

Sujoy Ghosh knows flavour. Few directors are as adept at creating atmosphere so swiftly and effectively, and Ghosh soaks his cinema in a seemingly authentic world. Authentic smelling, even, given the way his new film shows us Vidya Balan shielding her nose before entering a humid crowd, and the stains of sweat around her armpits as she scampers breathlessly through a rundown government office, fanning herself before her world falls completely to pieces.

Two features define Sujoy Ghosh's Kahaani 2. One is Vidya Balan's compelling pivotal performance. The other is the steady, unfussy, unobtrusive camerawork that is at sharp variance with the frenzied filming style usually preferred by makers of Bollywood thrillers. But nearly as important to the film's eventual impact is the coiled dynamism it packs into its kinetic two hours and a bit.

In 2012, Sujoy Ghosh and Vidya Balan had come together for Kahaani, a crack thriller about an ostensibly pregnant woman looking for her husband in Kolkata. Years later, the duo had a tiff, buried the hatchet and teamed up once again for Kahaani, which is not a sequel but a fresh story to carry the franchise forward.

Boundscript Motion Pictures and Pen India Limited's KAHAANI 2: DURGA RANI SINGH is a whodunit thriller that traces a mother's journey in the life of her child, the importance of a child in a mother's life and vice versa. The film starts off with a day in the life of Vidya Sinha (Vidya Balan), which oscillates between her wheel chair ridden daughter Mini (Naisha Khanna/Tunisha Sharma) and her office (in that order).

Vidya Balan is back. As Durga Rani Singh, the protagonist of Kahaani 2, which is not a sequel to the first part, but a stand-alone second instalment of a series that director Sujoy Ghosh is interested in fashioning. The first Kahaani had Balan play a heavily pregnant woman in search of a missing husband. It was set in Kolkata, and that was a win. Sated with the too-familiar by-ways of Dilli-Mumbai, Kolkata was refreshing.

To be the second instalment of a successful film is much like being born to a superstar - comparisons are inevitable. And while Kahaani leant on uncertainty, this one fails to hold on to its big reveal. That said, Kahaani 2: Durga Rani Singh is far less disappointing than many second-gen actors and the first half has you curious if not concerned about the chain of events that play out on the screen.

Vidya Sinha (Vidya Balan) has only one obsession in life. She wants to see her teenage daughter Mini, who is paralysed waist-downwards, walk again. But, is this scenario as obvious as it seems? Or is Vidya an impersonator of Durga Rani Singh from Kalimpong, who is wanted for kidnapping and murder?