The Embedded Horror in Pett Kata Shaw’s Bangla Folklore

In one of the segments in Pett Kata Shaw, a character says there’s no space in the city for humans, let alone spirits. Such cheekiness abounds in the anthology, originally released as a Chorki series in 2022, that is celebrating its North American premiere this week at the Fantasia Fest, one of the world’s biggest genre film festivals.. The anthology respects the duality inbuilt into horror, padding the intrinsically assumed suspension of disbelief with rationalising attempts. The initial loss of comprehension at the source of horror is followed by a stab at taming it and reaching a level of understanding with it, most unnervingly and yet at the same time amusingly in the first short, Ei Building Ey Meye Nishedh (No Girls are Allowed). Unfolding mostly within a room, the story takes one of the constitutive elements of ‘Bengali-ness’, the obsession with fish, and marries it to one of its other most popular figures, the ‘mecho-bhoot’, the ‘fish-spirit’. The smell of fish becomes both inviting and repulsive as a cultural legacy is cheerfully up-ended in this tale of an invasive female spirit (Shirin Akter Shila), who demands a feast and refuses to be treated as any other stray to be hurled a morsel. The narrator/protagonist (Shohel Mondol) tells us that this spirit has observed humans from close quarters and has adopted their manners. She expects to be indulged as one.

Neither the trapped protagonist nor the spirit exchange a word, while the film opts for an anxious, verbose dive into the former’s thinking through strategies for handling the situation and finding a possible escape. He knows a misjudged step can cost him dearly. Humayun cranks up the caution and precarity of the delicate circumstance to high degrees as well as leavening it with wicked humour.

Along the sidelines of the festival, Nuhash Humayun tells me over a Zoom interview how audiences laughed at and applauded the dark humour of the short – something he felt didn’t connect with most back in Bangladesh. “It was remarkable to see how things are received differently in different parts of the world”, he adds.

Beneath the short’s heavy narration about its protagonist’s mother’s philosophy of looking any situation in the eye, there are interesting things happening here. Notice the little subversions enacted by the gaze, as when Humayun makes us peep through a door left ajar at the protagonist while changing clothes, a predisposition so long reserved for the female character. The woman in this story has the power to dictate, ironically enough in a setting that forbids female entry. The man is making amends, trying things to appease her and just be in her service. While this initially is to save his skin, he develops a taste for this unusual relationship.

Even as the anthology moves from mofussil neighbourhoods to desolate rural corners to the busiest urban spots of Bangladesh, the focus on relationships in its many forms, both on a social and individual level, stays constant. There’s the long-married couple at the centre of Mishti Kichu (Something Sweet), experiencing a stasis in their relationship. The husband, played by Chanchal Chowdhury, has a failing memory. Despite his wife’s insistent reminders, he forgets to look into the house’s basic repairs and bring sweets for her. A djinn (Afzal Hossain) arrives at the man’s sweet shop; the two seem to strike a pact, the djinn granting him a power for memory that only soon starts to gnaw away the man. The enormity of his awakened, reignited memories, trailing back even before his birth to the birth of the universe, makes him come apart at the seams with rekindled primal needs, gradually losing all moorings of humanity. While the film’s tone consistently darkens to acquire something akin to dread, it is never entirely humourless. The djinn, who mostly appears as an old, harmless gentleman, tells the sweet seller that he had sent a lot of stories for a popular radio channel that features ghost stories but was never featured. He adds wistfully that the channel simply does not accept real stories.

The films skirt a variety of sub-genres, ranging from survival to cosmic and romantic horror. Humayun, who wrote them simultaneously, insists there is no grand design. Since he was trying horror for the first time, the variation stemmed from the inherent experimental scope in the anthology format, with him tossing different walls at the wall, checking what is resonating with people, thereby gauging the temperament of what he can successfully execute. “Besides, I can’t stay focused on the same thing for too long”, he adds.

The final two films circle around young urban couples, one that is at a testing point in their relationship, while the other foregrounds mourning, haunted by guilt and the weight of everything unsaid and unresolved. In Lokey Boley (Hearsay), the most inventive of the lot, beginning with gloriously atmospheric wide shots of fog-shrouded fields and a river with a lone boat, the narrative has both an epic and intimate feel, combining the cosiness of a fireside chat with the most evocative use of puppetry. The couple (Morshed Mishu and Syeda Taslima Hossain), who seem to have been trekking, find themselves in a “village of superstition”. As time seems to collapse into some kind of continuum, hinted by an early dialogue when the guy says he feels he crossed the same tree thrice, fables spill and masterfully coalesce, with themes zigzagging among social prejudice, discrimination, masculinity, patriarchal will-force and quelled agency. The film acknowledges the mutability of stories, evolving through time, changing characteristics, nevertheless remaining packed with certain core, resounding statements intricately entwined with social attitudes. Attaining an incredibly pitch-perfect tempo with the most unsettling use of shehnai and mondira in its score, this is the film that most satisfyingly clicks together, being the slyest, smartest comment on the malleable nature of storytelling.

Months before the scripts were written, even before they were even approved by Chorki, Humayun shared the stories with Rakat Zami and Avishek Bhattacharjee, who worked on the score. The pieces for every episode, which used a variety of local instruments, were arranged in one key, so that it all feels a part of the same world, to give a sense of a “strangeness that is familiar”. Humayun concedes the duo are the real superstars of the anthology. “There can be a documentary on what they have achieved in Pett Kata Shaw!”

Lokey Boley had instantly generated immense buzz and arguably emerged as the biggest audience favourite, as soon as it dropped on the platform in 2022. Humayun quips that this short, interestingly, is the one that Chorki was most unsure about in its use of puppetry and a four-fold story structure. He credits his script consultant, a noted poet, literary figure and his step-father, Aftab Ahmad, who recently passed away, for bringing texture and richness to the Bangla dialogues of Mishti Kichu and especially, Lokey Boley. He had shared with Ahmad the individual myths, who developed them in a ‘poetic and grandiose’ Bangla, while he wrote the portions of the couple that had a more ‘modern’ touch.

Restraint was integral to Humayun in developing his brand of South Asian horror, one that avoided jump scares. Since the production was on a modest scale, he got only two days to shoot each episode. Knowing they cannot afford expensive visual effects or CGI, he swivelled to minimalism.

“How can we tell horror through human emotions? Tapping into the horror of mob psychology, grief, faking emotions-we took all of these and put them in.”

Starring Pritom Hasan and Masuda Khan, the final film, Nishir Daak (Call of the Night), opens with a shot of dangling fish, an immediate throwback to the first shot of Ei Building Ey Meye Nishedh. While lightly threading in the preceding three films, Nishir Daak becomes a psychological excavation in the wake of bereavement. Is the man who hasn’t recovered from his partner’s suicide just having hallucinations? Humayun cleverly interjects the titular fable with the spate of real-life reported disappearances of children from Cox’s Bazaar. The film shies away from the overt political subtext enmeshed with the kidnappings and trafficking rackets but the sheer audacity to interweave the two is refreshing and admirable in itself. In perhaps the most revealing snatch of dialogue, the man tries to reassure himself that he's imagining his dead partner who has materialised right beyond the seashore, who is alluring him to come closer. The woman amusingly, in a tone of disbelief, asks him if he is genuinely dismissing her appearance as imaginary, as he had her depression. These unlock the film's layers. But just like in the other films, levity never is too far. In a delightful bit, Humayun cuts to an animated sketch from the Nishi Bhoot episode by Bangladesh’s beloved young animator, Samima Sraboni.

Pett Kata Shaw is already a year old on Chorki. It had its European premiere at the Rotterdam film festival earlier this year. At this particular point in his filmmaking journey, when he has amassed considerable acclaim, success and visibility, how does he assess Fantasia’s contributions?

“There was this woman in the audience who talked of how her husband, who was a Bangladeshi, used to tell her these stories. She and her daughter found these stories ways of thinking about and connecting with their lost family members. These possibilities of sharing grief are tremendous takeaways.”

Humayun also has Foreigners Only at the festival that played in the Things That Go East section, where he notes there were two other South Asian films. “Fantasia gives weirder stories from our part of the world a limelight, films that other festivals would probably look down upon.”

Humayun is , of course, no stranger to Fantasia. Last year, his Oscar-shortlisted film Moshari played at the festival and picked up awards. In the year between, Humayun has been on an extraordinary, historic journey, also becoming the first Bangladeshi to have content on Hulu (his short Foreigners Only was an episode of Bite Size Halloween’s third season). Deadline reported in 2022 that the leading American media company Anonymous Content and talent agency CAA signed up to represent Humayun (some of CAA’s other recent signings include Sex Education star Emma Mackey and filmmaker Luca Guadagnino).

Having made significant breakthroughs in South Asian horror, what terrifies Humayun still about working in the genre?

“I’d say the fear of getting too comfortable within a genre. Horror works better with low budgets, allowing for greater inventiveness. No one was attempting Bangladeshi horror when I was doing Moshari and Pett Kata Shaw. There was no support. The adversity made it only stronger. I fear if I get too much money one day (laughs), that will start showing on the screen and people will not like my work anymore; besides, there's always the fear of getting generic. "

Humayun teases a second and final season of Pett Kata Shaw, which he is currently writing in the light of the stupendous reception of the first. What can we expect?

“In the first season, we covered most of the popular, obvious stories. Now, I wish to dig into the more unexpected folklore, black magic and other stuff, while trying to tap something universal as well. Wish me luck!”