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Movie Review: Tumbbad
A gripping tale where horror is the demon inside all of us
If a horror movie was playing in the house, you wouldn’t find me watching it.
I have never been a fan of horror cinema. Primarily because, a mix of uncertainty and fright would not allow me to enjoy the script or the acting encompassing such films. I would be closing my ears and eyes, as soon as the door creaked or an actor deliberately went inside the haunted house. Of course something bad would happen and the actor would end up dying at the hands of an unnatural menacing force.
Tumbadd, on the other hand, is unlike most horror films.
Instead of making the plot unnaturally sinister, the movie introduces the audience to a natural element as the driving force behind it. The energy is godly as it is humanly. A prevalent feature of our minds and choices, depicting the hollowness in our materialistic obsessions. That characteristic is, greed. The two main leads, Vinayak Rao and Hastar, are metaphors for what awaits at the end of such avarice.
And that is why Tumbbad, as a cinematic experience stands out. The onerous village, Tumbbad, dotted by the loneliness of its structures eludes mystery and malice. The curse of gods, in the form of perpetual rain, depicts a sense of pall constantly looming over the landscape.
As the film progresses, greed slowly takes up different forms. The lust that Vinayak has for gold is the lust that Hastar has for wheat. Their eyes drip in that fancy, much at the cost of everything else in their lives. The story unravels not by their screen presence rather by their personas.
The suspense is slowly less of uncertainty and more of the certainty around things that will go wrong, because desire for more is the root of all troubles.
I had my expected “holy fuck” moments with Tumbbad, owing to the outstanding script and its watertight narration. However, an additional sense of inexplicable terror was the result of its background score, given by the famed Assassins’ Creed composer, Jesper Kyd. An ominous and wondrous music trails the characters’ footsteps setting for a gripping journey into the womb of Tumbbad.
However, nothing is more petrifying than the reminder that lust is not a supernatural phenomenon. It is weaved into our minds and souls, as we walk the thin line of wanting it and becoming it. By narrating Hastar’s legend in the beginning, the filmmakers want to drive home this point. The movie begins with a legend that ends as a lesson.
The characters do not scare you, the characteristics that make them what they are, does. And that is what makes Tumbbad, is a one of a kind cinema. It makes you believe in horrors that humans are capable of, much more than mythological tales. The world with its lechery should scare us.
Highly recommended, while I plan to watch it again.
