Tumbbad Review - A Lush Playground of Horror.

In the titular town where Tumbbad takes place, it’s constantly raining. Black umbrellas always circle the frame. People are morose, they’re greedy and they lust for more than they should. Dimly lit hallways are a favourite of cinematographer Pankaj Kumar. A lot of the film also takes place against a bloody backdrop, termed as the Goddess of Prosperity’s womb, which encloses the Earth. Vinayak (Sohum Shah) tells his son, Pandurang, about the Goddess’ favourite son, Hastar, who was the greediest of all the 160 million children she produced. To teach him a lesson, she cursed Hastar, saying that he would be forgotten by history.

Directors Rahi Anil Bharve and Adesh Prasad are enamoured by Tumbbad’s mystical backdrop, and it’s not hard to see why. Their imagination is fertile and the result is a sumptuous tale of greed and longing. The film even starts with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi, saying, “The world has enough for everyone’s need, not their greed.” The film is a grim morality tale that tackles the question, how much is too much? How do you get out, when the longing for more, starts to engulf the daily workings of your life? So, as Vinayak’s small chaul transforms into a palatial structure, and more rings sit on his fingers - his soul frays and he becomes a jaded individual.

We watch with bated breath as the directors and creative producer Anand Gandhi, who re-shot many portions of the film, carefully construct an atmosphere of tension, that subtly but evidently engulfs the film whole. There’s not a single scene in Tumbbad where there are whimsies and jokes. In fact, whenever Vinayak laughs, he does it because he’s found a new way to satiate his endless amount of greed. It’s absolutely terrifying to watch Sohum Shah, with his cloudy eyes, own the screen for the whole runtime of the film. Without him, I suspect, the film would’ve been much lesser.

It is a showcase of the fecund ideas of the directors, and the creatures are flat-out terrifying. Especially a grandmother who has rough skin with craters and nails come out. She always has blood all over her face and speaks in gruff, scary tones. At one point, a tree grows out of the grandmother, because she’s been sleeping so long. The only true parallel there is to this zany landscape is that of Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water (2017) and Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Here, also, the writers blur the lines between terrifying monsters and people who are monsters.

They pose the question - is a man so engulfed by the emotion of greed and longing, that he’d risk his child’s life to make an extra buck, any better than a monster that shackles people and carries them away while cackling away. The answer, of course, is not at all. Smartly, Tumbbad never has any moral compass guiding it. Even while Vinayak’s mother, who has a brief appearance in the beginning of the film, teaches him that his greed will one day be the end of him, she is extremely abusive - both verbally and physically.

Everybody in this film is looking for a way to fill their pockets - be it Vinayak’s ten-year old son, Pandurang, an opium merchant named Raghav, Vinayak’s mistress who constantly wars with his wife and even Vinayak himself. Smartly, the film is only a hundred minutes long, which works especially well with the template it is set in. This is because, it is a series of set pieces that move so rapidly, that it never gives you enough time to ponder on what has just happened. This works both in and against the film’s favour.

Because the winding story never moves in a linear motion. It takes twists and turns, and is set over three chapters - starting in 1918 and ending at partition. It is too hard to follow and in its final stretches, Tumbbad becomes a slog. But, Tumbbad is a lush playground of imagination. The film is something like you’ve never seen in Bollywood before, and unlike many horror films either. It isn’t reliant on being a horror film, and for the most part, plays out like a cautionary warning, through this benumbed and doomed man’s tale.

Sohum Shah, being the only constant throughout Tumbbad’s runtime has a large weight on his shoulders. He has to keep us hooked, all while chronicling the life of one of Hindi cinema’s most unlikable protagonists. He’s pitch perfect. As the gruff and abusive Vinayak, Sohum perfectly maps the character trajectory. His is a gradual shift, and Tumbbad stays grounded in reality, because he roots it firmly in the ground.

Tumbbad is also a technical marvel. The VFX and cinematography is top notch. Its sets are period appropriate and Tumbbad remains one of the most stunning films I’ve seen come out of Hindi cinema.

Tumbbad drives home the age old story - ‘The real monsters aren’t hiding under the bed, they’re hiding in plain sight.’ Don’t miss it.