As the director Homi Adajania, whose first film, “Being Cyrus,” is being released in December, put it: “After all, India is not just Bollywood and a Punjabi wedding.”

Adajania’s India is most certainly not. “Being Cyrus” is a dark, unsettling film about the members of a dysfunctional Parsi family who let a stranger into their lives, with dire consequences. Adajania, whose characters speak in English with a smattering of Gujarati, said he was interested in “the stark underbelly of life.” The film’s only crowd-pleasing aspect is the lead, Saif Ali Khan, an A-list Bollywood star who usually plays charming heroes.

Read the entire review at the IHT