Rating: C-
Dir: Nirmal Baby Varghese
Star: Jeffin Joseph, Arya Krishnan, Varun Ravindran, Nibin Stany
The horror genre has always seemed like a poor relation in India. Unlike in the West, where this year has seen films like Sinners, Weapons and even Final Destination: Bloodlines top the box-office, those seem extremely rare in India. Outside of occasional exceptions like Shaitaan, it’s a furrow mostly ploughed by low-budget film-makers, and I’m hard pushed to think of any which have been memorable. This is another one, which showed some early promise, but fell apart in the second half. It feels like a combination of not enough going on, and when things did happen, there was not enough explanation for them, leaving me unable to do much more than shrug my shoulders.
The early set-up here is straightforward, simple, and very (too?) familiar to anyone who has seen a Western horror film. Six friends go to stay in a remote cabin, and their car breaks down, limiting their departure options. Yeah, you are probably already rolling your eyes a bit at that sentence. Will it be unfriendly locals, seeking to turn them into barbecue? A casually discarded book, which contains weirdly readable inscriptions in an ancient tongue? Actually, neither of the above. The weirdness “starts” – and you’ll see in due course why I’m using quotes there – when the group enter a cave in search of a missing dog, deciding to ignore the signs which firmly state the cave has been closed, due to “security concerns.” Though arguably, the earlier dream one of them has, where he meets himself (top), could be the “start”.
Because what happens subsequently appears to be some kind of time-loop, with the friends following themselves – or, perhaps, leading themselves – through the caves, as well as around the cabin. Albin (Joseph), the one who has the dream, is also getting violent. Or got violent. Or will become violent. It’s all rather hard to say, and that’s the biggest issue. This kind of thing requires far more rigour, if you don’t want to have the audience saying, “Hang on… Wait a minute… What is going on here?” Something like Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes works, because it has been structured with meticulous detail. This just feels like a lot of wandering around a (well-maintained, and certainly well-lit) cave system, with occasional bursts of tepid violence.
That said, I didn’t hate this as much as I might have. The characters are less irritating than the typical Western counterparts, and it’s nice to see that young people are the same everywhere. Well, just as interested in drinking and taking drugs, at least: absolutely no indication of premarital sex to be found here, thank you very much. The makers shot in an actual underground location, the Odakolly Natural Cave, which adds value, with both visual and audio elements being solid (there’s some good drone work). However, I would be hard-pushed to tell you the specifics of what happened without a second watch, and I just was not interested enough to make that investment.