Friday, October 12, 2018

Review: TUMBBAD


Greed Is So Good It Is Scary...

4 stars

Mini Review:

In a village that seems to be doomed by the gods, there is one family that lives unafraid. A family that knows the secret hidden inside the womb of the goddess. Gold! As much gold as you can take as long as you are not touched by the beast… The brilliant scary, horrifying film is based on a couple of stories written by Marathi writer Narayan Dharap who in turn was inspired by Stephen King. The writing is practically flawless, the music is haunting and the performances jaw-droppingly good. Brilliant watch.

Review:

‘Greed is good,’ said Gordon Gekko, and this fantasy horror film writers and directors Rahi Anil Barve and Anand Gandhi and two other writers Mitesh Shah and Adesh Prasad take us down the rabbit hole and we watch a fabulous story unfold.

The setting is brilliant. It’s like an old moralistic tale of incessant rain and thunder and all shades of black and grey. It has the reds of blood and widowhood, and the gold of greed glitters beautifully. The background music keeps you from breathing, keeps you from thinking anything other than watch the story unfold on the screen, and you begin to anticipate the pain in the belly of the beast each time Sohum Shah, who plays Vinayak Rao emerge with gold coins for his family.

Greed will curse you to want more and more and you will live for hundreds of years, he tells his son, who wants to become like his dad. But you have seen what happens when you know the secret of the greed, when you have been touched by the beast…

Narayan Dharap wrote creepy tales of witches and cursed moons and the undead, inspired by Stephen King. Based on his tale of a witchy grandmother (and who has not thought their wrinkly grandmothers with pale liquidy eyes and gnarly fingers weren’t a mutant or in the least a witch?), Tumbbad tells a tale of a village so cursed by the gods, it rains incessantly. But Vinayak’s family thrives because they have found the key to the local diety’s gold. The curse of greed is passed on. There is skin touched by the beast, melting and seething with pus and boils, there are hearts beating with greed even though the body has disintegrated, there is a living breathing womb and more to keep horror fans happy. There’s even music that keeps you frozen to the seats. The acting by every character - Sohum Shah as the grown up Vinayak, the little kid Mohammad Samad, Dhundiraj Jogalekar, Deepak Damle, Jyoti Malshe, Anita Date - is just awesome. The period setting is crafted well, the creepy prosthetics and homes in ruins… Everything comes together to scare you into not touching the popcorn.

But you exhale when the lights come on, and you take a minute or two to extricate your nails from your arms because you have hugged yourself in fear. And the consequences of greed - like a living breathing thing is not extinguished, it accompanies you home…


(This review appears on www.nowrunning.com )

   


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