‘100 Days’: When Bollywood Dared to Scare

The 1991 film opens with a quasi-scientific premise: a rare few are born with the gift of premonition. They can see the future in vivid detail, long before it unfolds. The narrator goes on to tell us that “these” eyes belong to our lead, Devi — perhaps a shoutout to Satyajit Ray’s film of the same name. We meet a sporty Madhuri Dixit who’s playing a spirited game of tennis. But the match comes to an abrupt halt because she starts seeing disturbing images: a man in a black trench coat, the back of a familiar woman blow-drying her hair, and then her murder. 

Her friend Sudha assures her that Devi is just imagining things, but Devi is sure: “No, this wasn’t a dream. Something will happen!” Her vision comes to pass. We find out that the woman is someone she knows intimately. As the film introduces multiple suspects, Devi can’t escape the niggling feeling that her visions hold the key to a murder everyone else believes to be a disappearance. This spooky season, there’s no better time to revisit the unabashedly scary 100 Days (1991) — especially in an industry that often can’t serve up horror without comic relief.