When things get a little too serious in Kaashmora – a movie that claims to be darkly fantastical – I almost expect some comic relief: there has to be a joke sometime now. Blame Vivekh, Karthi, or those fashionably-there horromedy movies that get made every month, an expectant hush falls over the theatre during those tense moments – a rising crescendo that drums on yours ears, at the end of which Vivek bursts in with a one-liner. Or, Karthi. Or, the actress who plays his sister. The audience knows that it just cannot be all (that) frightening. And, the director knows that the audience knows; so he alternates horror and humour with some telling background score (Santhosh Narayanan), unleashing a vengeful spirit now, and Vivekh and company later. One of the funnier instances in the film is when Karthi – the-exorcist-who-isn’t – encounters a set of ‘real’ spirits inside an old, haunted bungalow.
So droll, yet it works.
****
If trailers are anything to go by – I always watch them after the movie – Kaashmora‘s two-minute long affair would have you thinking Baahubali thoughts, horror aside. But what you do end up watching is a medley of different genres thrown together in a muddled heap. Karthi as Kaashmora is a conman who feeds off the society’s fear of the supernatural, and does roaring business as an exorcist. Until he meets a set of real spirits, who are all quite …dated. There’s Chandramukhi and Baahubali‘s villains fused into one, a piece of elaborate architecture that is reminiscent of Aayirathil Oruvan, a king and his kingdom, a princess (Nayanthara) and her lover, an infallible rival suitor, and those godforsaken CGI apparitions, red-eyed and smoky – all set against varying shades of grey and black.
Sri Divya – with a forgettable screen name – is mild distraction at best; her appearance too fleeting to be convincing, but that probably isn’t her fault. She appears and disappears at the director’s will, and seems to be around only so that Kaashmora could swat at her. Nayanthara, though, looks a dream in those period costumes …and appears to have stepped right out of someone’s fantasy. She does an Avanthika with a sword – only, her opponents have those telltale CGI contours.
Recommended
Nobody quite cares, though. The props are all old, but they scare all the same. The humour is characteristically Vivekh, and brash when it’s Karthi, and the theatre explodes with laughter. There are prophecies written on leaves, a child goddess with an unconvincing story… sometimes, seeming right out of Tamil television, with its penchant for everything supernatural and over-the-top dramatics. Only, this isn’t television. It isn’t a cheeky commentary on recent cinema either; the Thamizh Padam of 2016 – now that would have been brilliant, no?
****
The Kaashmora review is a Silverscreen original article. It was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the movie. Silverscreen.in and its writers do not have any commercial relationship with movies that are reviewed on the site.