Darr

How did Yash Chopra manage to make Darr creepy from the very first scene

That's the hero talking to the heroine through the letter, though it doubles as exactly what the villain could be saying —and is probably thinking, since he, not the hero, is nearby.

but so brain-bashingly stupid? A story that uses fear to contrast definitions and depictions of love would be so much more effective if the romantic pair (Sunil/Sunny Deol and Kiran/Juhi Chawla) did anything to protect themselves from it. They're too stupid to be as afraid as they should be (and therefore cannot act with intelligence), yet somehow they're also too stupid to do much about that fear once it begins to sink in.

For example, if you're being stalked, don't open packages that are left at your door anonymously.

They've got no street smarts, which I guess is to be expected of a girl who still wears a knee-length plaid skirt and white socks to school, but what's the naval officer's excuse? This is a guy who thinks it's funny to pretend to attack his girlfriend from the depths of a dark swimming pool, after the stalker (Rahul/Shahrukh Khan) has shown up at her home and called her, giving her a terrifying thirty seconds of panic as she thinks the stalker is trying to drown her. (And let's not get into the dangers of making someone thrash around unpredictably near wet metal and concrete!)

Inspired by Phoebe Cates?

That right there should get his ass dumped, and it gives unfortunate credence to Rahul's insistence that Sunil doesn't deserve Kiran. When even the comic relief is telling you to call the police to handle the stalker, it's time to m*therf*cking call the police. Because the cluelessness of the leads is no match for the psychopath's obsession, the tension over his next move is so much less than it could have been.

THAT SAID, Darr is otherwise quite enjoyable with flashes of very thoughtful filmmaking. No energy is wasted on showing the psychopath's slow descent into madness. Introduced as a peeping-Tom's-eye-view of the wet and vulnerable heroine, an uneven, distant percussive sound under a melody that will become his calling card, a rustle in the forest, we know he's a threat before we even see him. That is brilliant. (Note I won't argue it's unique; I don't watch enough scary movies to know.) The villain is far and away the most well-written character in the film. He's given more complexity and nuanced depictions. He's also the most consistent, which may be just the logical result of his obsession, but it's also a very welcome change from the vagaries of the child-like heroine and lackluster hero. 

All those stories of Sunny Deol being pissed off about Shahrukh stealing the show in Darr make total sense to me. The hero got shafted. Part of that is the writing—it'd be clear on paper what's going on here (which makes me think that there really must not have been a final-ish script available for him to read, or if there was he didn't read it)—but a very significant factor is Shahrukh's charisma, wildness, and hamminess. He may have great material to work with, but he brings so much to it. To be honest, I have a hard time separating the writing, directing, and performance. I can't tell where Rahul-as-conceived ends and Rahul-as-performed begins.

Not just the scenarios and dialogue but so much of his basic posture and blocking added to our sense of who Rahul is and what he's thinking. For example, the first time we really see him, he is quite literally already on the edge of death.

Or that scene in the elevator, when in the span of a few seconds he goes from sniffing an unwitting Juhi's dupatta and almost touching her to curling up in a little ball in another direction when his (also unaware) rival appears—perfect.

Expand, contract.

That is a person who is not yet confident (or maybe unhinged) enough to be seen. Later in the story, he crashes right past simply being visible to flaunting his presence, but not just yet. Rahul's mania takes many forms: he can realax and play with it, but he can also be wound up and pushed over the brink by it.

I love how the movie hints that the hero and villain can be different sides of the same coin. From the onset, they are compared and confused. Kiran thinks Rahul's song is Sunil's. She talks about how much Sunil loves harassing her (per the subtitles, anyway), like pretending to be a corpse and falling out of her closet when she opens its door, but of course at this point she has no idea what "harassment" is going to mean in her life.

She thinks hands covering her eyes during a black-out at her birthday dinner are her boyfriend's, but boy is she wrong. Later examples include the way each communicates with her using their own blood and the contrasts in her reactions when each of them marks her forehead in red. 

Early in the film, there's very telling narration as Kiran's train from school goes through a tunnel and the screen is dark.

What Rahul suffers is not utterly different or separate from love. It's an overreaching, a transgression, a mutation. 

Anyway, Rahul is an amazing character, and SRK nailed it. This is my favorite of his performances before Dil Se. Which probably isn't saying much, since I tend to avoid-yaar the early and mid-1990s, but still.

Darr sounds and looks really good. In an era—and, let's be honest, with an actor—I associate with crassness, tackiness, and just plain off-ness, I was surprised to find so much cleverness, especially when supporting a story that could have very easily dissolved into a slurry of leering, cheap scares, and pink blood. There are so many ironies that show how in conflict with the standard filmi order, how undesirable, Rahul is. 

The music is so effective at supporting and creating the film's moods. Whoever did the background score (was that also Shiv-Hari?) was completely engaged with what was going on in the film and made sure the music was integrated carefully. For example, listen for how Rahul's theme tune (the "tu hai meri, Kiran" snippet of "Jaadu Teri Nazar") is used throughout, repeated and refracted. I particularly like a militaristic version that plays with no instruments but drums that rattle, just as it surely sounds in Rhaul's head. Or the frantic strings as Kiran thinks she's drowning in the pool. Even those horrible phone rings are effective. Remember the scene when the different phone lines in the house ring a simultaneously but so discordantly? 

Visual motifs repeat too. Writing appears throughout, almost always as a sign of Rahul's insanity (the blood-soaked rag, the vandalized apartment, and oh yeah CARVING HER NAME INTO HIS CHEST WITH A KNIFE)... 

 

but Sunil's writing opens the film. What's that about? Another way of showing the importance of type of love as distinguishing between hero and villain? Water is everywhere, sometimes as a threat, sometimes as a force of isolation, sometimes as sexuality (Kiran getting caught in the rain and starting to take off her wet dress in the beginning, her drenched, sensual dancing in Rahul's imagination), always as unrest (the film loves the word "toofan"). There are parallel scenes of both hero and villain on balconies watching Kiran by a swimming pool in the proximity of the other. Likewise the two boat scenes, bookending the film with the hero making identical entrances into them. 

Glad he had time after recovering from the chest wounds but before rescuing his wife from a murderer to stop and find black cloth to tie around his head. 

It's worth asking how in the world this violent, blood-filled, psychopath-centered film won a silver lotus at the National Film Awards for "best popular film providing wholesome entertainment." The official site for the 1993 awards here says Darr was awarded "for its convincing presentation of the theme of love, which has been rendered complex by its relationship with past experiences of fear." I suppose it's possible to argue that the love/loves portrayed in Darr is/are complex, though I don't think so—Sunil and Kiran love each other in that typical film way that means they'll do stupid things in the name of protecting each other, and Rahul loves Kiran in that very special, completely ignorant, delusional, and solipsistic way that stalkers so often do—but how is the fear "past"? There is very palpable (and very strangely dubbed—in the big fight at the end, only SRK is making any noise) fear until the very last  tacked-on scene. Wholesome schmolesome.