Darr

The film begins with Kiran (Juhi Chawla), a beautiful college student, returning home to her brother Vijay (Anupam Kher) and his wife Poonam (Tanvi Azmi) for Holi celebrations. She is being obsessively stalked along the way by Rahul (Shah Rukh Khan), her classmate who has a crush on her. Kiran's boyfriend Sunil (Sunny Deol) is a navy officer Sunil's Captain Mehra (Dalip Tahil) is also the father of Rahul. Rahul tries to be friendly with Sunil in order to be closer to Kiran.

When Kiran reaches home, she is continually stalked by Rahul on the phone. This causes much stress to herself and her family. He crashes Kiran's family's Holi celebration as a member of the band. Sunil asks Kiran to offer the band some money for their performance, where Rahul expresses his love to Kiran, which disturbs her greatly and a foot chase ensues between Sunil and Rahul, but Rahul soon disappears into the crowd.

When Rahul receives the news of Kiran and Sunil's engagement, he tries to shoot and kill Sunil when the couple is out shopping for a wedding ring. He misses his aim and Sunil begins to chase him, from which Rahul escapes while Sunil meets with an accident.

Sunil after his recovery gets married to Kiran but Rahul still refuses to give up on Kiran. He kills the two cops assigned for their protection and defaces their new home with graffiti that declares his love and which causes them more distress. To get away from the stalker, Sunil takes Kiran on a surprise honeymoon to Switzerland while booking extra tickets to Goa so that the stalker will go away. Rahul then kills his best friend Vikram and makes it look like that Vikram was the one who was her stalker. Rahul turns up at their hotel in the Alps after knowing their location from Poonam and Vijay. Kiran recognizes him from college and the couple welcomes him to be part of their festivities.

That very evening, Sunil finds out that Rahul was the one who has been Kiran's stalker all along. He sends Kiran away on a boat confronts Rahul and beats him up. Rahul stabs Sunil with a knife after feigning surrender and leaves him for dead. He then goes to the boat and starts forcing Kiran in marrying him. But Sunil comes back and beats him. He gets shocked when he hears Kiran supporting Sunil before being killed.

Kiran and Sunil then return to India and reunite with their family.

[2][3] Sanjay Dutt was the original choice of the role of antagonist Rahul, but Chopra was unable to finalize him because of his jail sentence due to illegal possession of arms. Sudesh Berry was then considered for the role, but was rejected after a screen test. Ajay Devgan was offered the role of Rahul, but he could not accept due to other commitments.

After Aamir Khan left the film, Shah Rukh Khan was cast as Rahul. Darr helped bring Shah Rukh Khan to stardom and he went on to star in all of Chopra's future directorial ventures. Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty and Jackie Shroff were all offered the role of Sunil before Sunny Deol.

Sridevi, who had previously worked with Chopra in Chandni (1989) and Lamhe (1991), was the original choice for the role of Kiran. The role was crafted and planned much like her previous roles in Chandni and Lamhe. Chopra too admitted dressing Kiran like Chandni and Pallavi/Pooja, which can be observed in the film as well. However, Sridevi refused to accept the role as she wanted Kiran's character to be the obsessed lover instead of the victim, but Chopra refused this change of plot. After Sridevi, the role was offered to Divya Bharti mainly on the consultation of Sunny Deol. But owing to some previous misunderstandings, Aamir got Divya replaced by Juhi Chawla.[4]

Nitish Bharadwaj was approached for Sunil's role after Rishi Kapoor and Jackie Shroff rejected the role. This is because of his immense popularity as Lord Krishna's role in B.R. Chopra's Mahabharat. But Nitish rejected the role claiming that the role is not as challenging as it would be.

The film's title Darr was suggested to Yash Chopra by Hrithik Roshan and Chopra's younger son Uday Chopra.[5]

The soundtrack for Darr was composed by the duo Shiv-Hari (Shiv Kumar Sharma and Hariprasad Chaurasia). It was the second best-selling Bollywood soundtrack album of the year.[6] The soundtrack album sold about 4.5 million units in India,[7] earning at least ₹10.8 crore (equivalent to ₹63 crore or US$8.8 million in 2019).[8] Rakesh Budhu of Planet Bollywood in his review gave the album 8.5 stars out of 10.[9]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Planet Bollywood	[9]

All lyrics are written by Anand Bakshi.

At the domestic Indian box office, Darr became the third highest-grossing film of 1993, after Aankhen and Khalnayak, and was declared a blockbuster.[10] In India, it was released on 190 screens, with 19.96 million tickets sold. Its domestic gross was ₹15.73 crore, including a net income of ₹10.74 crore, which is equivalent to ₹184.4 crore (US$26 million) when adjusted for inflation.[1] Its domestic gross is equivalent to ₹339 crore (US$48 million) when adjusted for inflation.[lower-alpha 1]

At the overseas box office, Darr was the year's highest-grossing Indian film of 1993, grossing ₹5.58 crore.[11] Worldwide, it grossed ₹21.31 crore,[1] equivalent to ₹366 crore (US$51 million) when adjusted for inflation.[lower-alpha 1]

Darr was remade in Kannada as Preethse, starring Upendra as Chandu (Rahul) Shiva Rajkumar as Surya (Sunil) and Bollywood actress Sonali Bendre playing Kiran.[12] The film also partially inspired the 2005 Tamil Chinna, starring Arjun Sarja and Sneha in lead roles. The Telugu film Tapassu also borrowed some scenes from Darr.

The teaser trailer for an intended five-part web series Darr 2.0 was released on YouTube on August 30, 2016. It was set to be a retelling of the film in a contemporary setting, portraying cyber-stalking and digital crimes. The web series was set to be produced by Ashish Chopra under the banner of Y-Films and directed by Vikash Chandra. Screenplay and dialogues are by Nikhil Taneja and Shubham Yogi.[13][14] The series was later postponed.

• Chowdhury, Purna (2010). "Bollywood Babes: Body and Female Desire in the Bombay Films Since the Nineties and Darr, Mohra and Aitraaz: A Tropic Discourse". In Mehta, Rini Bhattacharya; Pandharipande, Rajeshwari V. (eds.). Bollywood and Globalization: Indian Popular Cinema, Nation, and Diaspora. Anthem Press. pp. 56–60. ISBN 978-1843318330.

• Darr at IMDb