Ek Villain Returns

Year: 2022

Actors: Elena Roxana Maria Fernandes, Disha Patani, Tara Sutaria, John Abraham

Duration: 129 min

A masked intruder barges into an apartment complex, where he attacks and kills a singer named Aarvi Malhotra (Tara Sutaria). The cops, headed by ex-CBI officer and DCP Aditya Rathore (Shaad Randhawa), deduce that the attack was organized by Gautam Mehra (Arjun Kapoor), who is the son of a businessman named Divesh Mehra (Bharat Dabholkar), and arrest him.Flashback: Gautam Mehra is a spoiled brat, who is berated by his father, Divesh, for having created a commotion at his ex-girlfriend Siya's wedding. Gautam rode into the wedding on a bike and beat up the wedding party when Siya's father (Kaizaad Kotwal) ordered him to be thrown out. Gautam only retreats when Siya kisses him in front of everyone. Gautam leaves by telling Siya' husband that she still loves him, and that Gautam can die, but not lose. Gautam then humiliates the husband by beating him up as well. The commotion video has been made into a rap song by singer Aarvi. Gautam plans vengeance against Aarvi. Pretending to be in love with her, he helps her scare away her rival Qiran (Elena Roxana Maria Fernandes). Gautam enters Qiran's hotel room wearing a mask (the same one that the killer was wearing when he attacked Aarvi). He makes Qiran sing and generally threatens her with forced sex, before escaping. Qiran withdraws from the show, giving an opening to Aarvi, who is the only backup rapper around. Aarvia quickly becomes famous.Aarvi falls for Gautam (they have sex) and reveals her birth secret, that her father Balkrishnan Shastri, a popular singer, had an extramarital affair with her mother, but never accepted either of them. Her main goal is to make her father accept her as his daughter by becoming a famous singer. Gautam leaks Aarvi's childhood photos and Shastri publicly rejects his daughter. Aarvi is heartbroken. Three months after the breakup, when Gautam gets attacked by his ex-girlfriend Siya's (Karishma Sharma) husband, and Aarvi takes care of him, he realizes his love for her. He pleads with her to give him a second chance, but Aarvi leaves him, albeit with a heavy heart.Present: Cops find Aarvi's mobile phone video where she is being attacked by a masked man. Aarvi calls out Gautam, and the police send a large force to arrest him. Gautam escapes from the cops. ACP V. K. Ganesan (J. D. Chakravarthy) surmises that Gautam hasn't killed Aarvi (he finds a inscription on Aarvi's wall of a smiley face, that has been seen in other murder cases as well). The cops interrogate Bhairav Purohit (John Abraham), whom Aarvi had called from her phone, the day she was murdered, but he denies committing the crime and there is no evidence either. Ganesan determines a pattern, that the killer only targets young girls with one-sided lovers, after discovering that 18 girls have been murdered with similar ways of working in the past 6 months. The ensuing circumstances Ganesan determine that Gautam is not the serial killer. Gautam meets Ganesan, who tells Gautam about how the killer is being an angel to all jilted lovers by killing their ex-girl-friends, who dumped them.Flashback: Bhairav is a cab-driver who also works part-time as a zookeeper along with his friend Keshav (Digvijay Rohildas). He meets Rasika (Disha Patani), a retail salesgirl at a mall, falls deeply in love with her and harbors plans of marriage. Rasika draws smiley faces. One day, Rasika injures a group of rogues that were eve-teasing her, which reveals her dark side to Bhairav. The day Bhairav decides to propose to Rasika, he witnesses her getting intimate with Atul, her manager, a married man, and he is heartbroken. Rasika meets Bhairav and says that she knows he saw her with Atul. She says she likes Atul, who gives her promotions, presents and good bonuses, and in returns she gives him what he wants. She only used Bhairav to drive her to Lonavla for their date. She subsequently instigates him to kill girls who don't reciprocates the feelings of their respective boyfriends. Bhairav is mentally tormented and starts murdering dozens of girls. He fed his victims to the tiger in Keshav's zoo. One day when Aarvi is travelling in his cab (when Aarvi and Gautam were coming out of the hospital and Gautam was begging Aarvi to stop and say, but Aarvi wanted to leave), Bhairav misunderstands that she has dumped Gautam, and attacks her.Present: Gautam is with Ganesh, when they receive news that all the murdered girls had only 1 Facebook friend request in common, and that from Keshav Rane. Aarvi's album was listen to multiple times from the Zoo's IP address. Gautam knows that the killer is at the Zoo. Gautam leaves to confront the killer. This is when Bhairav enters Ganesan's house and he is killed by Bhairav. It is revealed that Aarvi is in fact alive. She tries to escape the zoo where she had been kept by Bhairav. Aarvi finds Gautam looking for her, but thinks that he is her kidnapper and hides. but Bhairav catches her and locks her in an underground cage. Just as Gautam and Bhairav are about to fight, the police comes and detains Bhairav. They investigate Keshav's (Bhairav's friend at the zoo) kid who tells the police that his father is the killer (The kid lies since his father used to hit him often and only Bhairav was his real friend in life). The police also investigate the crime scene where they find a girl's dead body inside the freezer, but it is not Aarvi. Outside the station, Gautam sees Bhairav and Rasika hugging.They both go to Aarvi's cage and think that she is unconscious. But she isn't and stabs Bhairav with a glass shard that she found there. Rasika starts to laugh while Bhairav attacks Aarvi. Gautam comes to save Aarvi and a fight ensues between the guys. Bhairav hits Gautam and he falls to the ground. Bhairav asks Rasika for a 5-star rating. Gautam starts to laugh and asks who is Rasika and where she is. He tells Bhairav that she is gone and that he was hallucinating her. Bhairav then reminisces that Rasika told him that Atul was planning to ditch his family for her and that he had in fact inadvertently killed Rasika by cracking her back, while hugging her and begging her not to leave him. The body that the police has found in the freezer was Rasika's, who Bhairav had kept for his own happiness. He drops to the ground in dismay while Gautam and Aarvi reconcile. Realizing his mistake, Bhairav walks inside the cage of the tiger only to meet the same fate of his victims.Aarvi can be seen singing at her concert with the support of her fans and Gautam. In the post-credit scene, at a mental hospital, we see Rakesh Mahadkar (Riteish Deshmukh) from the prequel, who has survived the accident and became paraplegic, meet Bhairav, who has lost an eye due to the tiger attack. Rakesh goes in Bhairav's room and unplugs Bhairav's medication and machines and recites his promise from the prequel and Bhairav wakes up just before the screen blacks out.

Genre: Action   Crime   Romance   Thriller