How Kanu Behl's 'Agra' Confronts Desire, Delusion, & Darkness

Agra, by Kanu Behl, is a gritty psychological horror film that leaves you unsettled with its stark portrayal of an India that loudly proclaims progress while simultaneously coexisting with poverty, decay, and moral depravity.

You enter a small, matchbox-like home where an extremely dysfunctional family resides under one roof, each member trying to make sense of their own place, like squatters in an unrelenting, macabre landscape of concrete and suffocating lack of personal space. A father, his girlfriend, the mother, and a son.

The film’s protagonist is a disturbed 24-year-old, Guru, who cannot differentiate between reality and his own neurosis. He is a product of a deeply patriarchal setup, with resentful parents, frustrated women, and disillusioned men living under one roof, divided only by a single floor. Guru wants access to the terrace to create a room for his fantasies—a space he can finally call his own.

A Mind at War with Walls

Guru is despicable and seethes throughout the film. The brutality of his behaviour, fuelled by repressed desire, makes you cringe. Yet you remain hooked, following him through recurring bursts of psychedelic colours that merge into one another like a whirlpool of disturbance and dystopia.

The film makes you wince when it depicts him attempting to assault his sister. As she escapes his clutches, he crouches like a defeated animal. The camera tracks him on all fours, hyena-like, with light falling through the cracks between walls and a half-open door—reminding us of the personal spaces denied to the common man in India.

Agra—known for the Taj Mahal, the eternal symbol of love, and for its notorious asylum—reveals its broken dwellers resurrected between dusty paths, where light falls unevenly across labyrinthine lanes and dirty sewers.

The film gains momentum as Guru follows Priti, played by Priyanka Bose, a disabled woman who runs an Internet café. Guru projects his desire onto Priti, who herself struggles with her past and her physical limitations.

Their encounters reflect a troubling dynamic: a woman seeking security and a man consumed by his uncontrolled psychological impulses.

Guru imagines building a family with Priti, bringing into the fold Rahul Roy—the morally compromised father, who is nevertheless noble enough not to abandon his first wife and their unstable son—along with his girlfriend, referred to as “aunty” in the film.

The patriarch agrees to hand over his property to a builder, and we watch the mud and mortar crumble like the film’s human souls. The monstrous, dingy structure—five floors of cramped, collapsing rooms—seems already to have destroyed the family long before its completion.

Priti settles uneasily into life with the unstable Guru as he oscillates between psychological distress and his need to assert a distorted sense of masculinity.

Priyanka Bose embodies women who have no real choice but to endure brutality simply to find a small place under the sun—even if they must rise through flames to claim it.

The raw energy between Guru and Priti exposes the repressed desires that simmer within human beings, yet you quickly learn to purge such thoughts—like wiping your hands with sanitiser that serves as your moral compass.

Mohua Chinappa is a poet, author and runs two podcasts, The Mohua Show and The Literature Lounge. 

Views expressed by the author are their own.