Boo That!
In a country full of folklore, superstition and myths, a well made horror film is likely to work, as the recent hit Munjya showed. The now popular horror-comedy genre (Stree heralded it), makes sure that the scares are toned down and tempered with humour, so that the audience is not grossed out, or put off by gore.
Munjya director, Aditya Sarpotdar’s film, Kakuda (on ZEE5), follows the same template—rural setting, supernatural creature terrorizing residents, resolution of the problem. However, this one has far less impact, perhaps because it lacks an emotional connect—it seems a bit callous about violent death (a father rehearses his son’s funeral!)
In a north Indian village of Ratodi, where a skeleton serves as a scarecrow, houses have a peculiar architectural feature— a small door next to the main entrance. If a male resident of a household does not open that small door by 7.15 pm, he develops a hump, and dies 13 days later, believed to be killed by the curse of heavy-breathing Chucky-like mini monster (Mahesh Jadhav). So men rush back home to make the deadline; like Stree, it satirizes the standard instruction given to women, to get home before dark.
The villagers are quite blasé about this; women dress in their finery and gather to sing when an unfortunate man is so affected.
Indu (Sonakshi Sinha) is in love with a halwai (sweetmeat seller) from Ratodi, but her eccentric father (Rajendra Gupta with silly hairstyle) does not approve of any suitor who does not speak English. So Indu and Sunny (Saqib Saleem) elope to get married. He is delayed on his way home, and invites the curse. A sensible Indu tries what no other villager did—take Sunny to a city doctor, but it doesn’t help. There she runs into Victor (Ritesh Deshmukh) who calls himself a “ghost hunter.”
Victor has a funky hairstyle, dresses like he were going on a jungle safari, and gets offended if anyone calls him a tantrik. Victor enjoys interacting with ghosts and ghouls and helping the living get rid of them. While Sunny sulks and waits for inevitable death, Indu and Victor go about figuring out who Kakuda was, and why he targets the men of the village—these sequences are portrayed with rather elementary animation.
It’s always more effective to have many more frightened faces on screen when a malevolent spirit is on the loose, so there’s Sunny’s friend Kilvish (Aasif Khan), the kind of character who exists in films to be on call by the main lead at all times, and Indu’s spooky twin, who is around just to be possessed by Kakuda, and speak in a growl-y voice.
All films of this genre demand suspension of disbelief, but the really effective ones come up with a credible, or at least interesting backstory for the ghost. Kakuda is just weird and the attempt to make the curse comic does not hide its awfulness.
Riteish Deshmukh plays Victor with such relish, that without him the film would have deflated quickly. The other actors look dutifully scared or aghast as required by the scene. Poor Saqib Salim is stuck looking forlorn while others run about playing ghostbusters. Kakuda has a paint-by-numbers, catch-the-trend-before-it-fades feel to it; since it is made for OTT, the film might find its audience of horror fans, but it is not particularly scary, and not the least bit funny.
(This piece first appeared in rediff.com)
