The BLUF

A village has a tradition of killing their female infants. The gruesome part is that the women of the village partake in the process of infanticide. Till, the murdered souls of those little girls come for revenge. The love for the macabre should overtake now. But it doesn’t.

THE MEAT AND THE POTATOES

For any horror movie to be a memorable one, there needs to be a fear factor embodied in the story. The story is macabre but in a horrifying statement about the tradition of female infanticide in India. The horrifying reality lies more in these rituals rather than in the reprise of the dead souls, put to rest before their time, coming back for revenge.

The only gut-wrenching reaction to the narrative is towards the women who lead the practice of these practices.

IN THE ZONE

We felt that the performances of several  seasoned actors could not find the space to land at all.  The narrative between the backstory and the present, the sojourns with the ghosts of the girls were so hectic and disjointed that we failed to connect with the personal stories of any of the actors. Therefore, we missed seeing Shabana Azmi and Leela Sampson in action.

FWAR

The horror genre is not only about evoking fear, it is about your heart pumping in anticipation of the next event, the next frame that could send you to a roller coaster ride.

Society’s fear of evil is the bane of any horror genre but if that evil can affect a family or a community, it can become an important plot for the success of the effect of the horror of the movie. The older generation of horror movies had little makeup or special effects (SFX) but the newer movies can be slicker not only because of the makeup but also because of good use of special effects. There was no such attempt to use better SFX in the movie.

For horror purists, too many sub-plots or twists may be important to the visuals of the narrative. There was indeed an important back-story to three characters of the movie, the neighbor, the son and the grandmother.

Yet, there was no twist in the plot that left us breathless. Infact the story continued its path of a very predictable narrative.

The protagonists and the actors were presented on canvas with little or no attachment to either the plot or between themselves, causing a feeling of disconnect between what they were meant to be enacting and the core of the horror story.

Why some characters jumped out from the back story and why the narrative ended up not carrying enough steam to make its path into a comprehensive story is a myth. Especially when chronicling a devilish ritual of a society like infanticide, the director failed to use the brilliance of actors like Leela Sampson and Shabana Azmi to their potential.

What We Loved: The conversation about female infanticide is long overdue

What We Missed: Everything else.