DARLINGS is the story of a woman trapped in a violent marriage. Badrunissa aka Badru (Alia Bhatt) is the daughter of Shamshunissa Ansari aka Shamshu (Shefali Shah). Her father passed away many years ago. Badru and Hamza Sheikh (Vijay Varma) are in love with each other. After Hamza lands a... job in the Railways, he proposes marriage. Both marry and shift to a flat in Barha Chawl, Mumbai. Shamshu also resides in the same chawl, that too on the same floor. Three years have passed. Hamza is revealed to be an alcoholic and a wife beater. He would assault Badru over trivial matters at night. In the morning, he would apologize or express regret over the violence. Badru would then forgive her. Shamshu hates seeing her daughter being beaten up by Hamza. She suggests to her to get rid of him, and even kill him if possible! Badru, however, feels that he’ll change one day and that might happen once they have a baby. She tells him to quit alcohol but he fails to do so. One day, he finds out that he has cirrhosis of the liver. The doctor warns him that if he drinks, he might die. Hamza hides this information from her and pretends to have quit alcohol on his own for good. Their life gets better and Badru is on cloud nine. She gets pregnant. All is going well until Hamza once again gets violent, this time without drinking, and attacks Badru so violently that she miscarries. She’s taken to the hospital. Here, she decides to take revenge and not suffer anymore. She asks the doctor for sleeping pills as she complains of sleeplessness. She lies about it and gives the pills to Hamza, without his knowledge. Once he goes to sleep, she ties him. Shamshu becomes her partner-in-crime although she fails to understand what her daughter is planning to do with Hamza. What happens next forms the rest of the film.
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