Scream Stream: Manju Warrier’s techno-horror film Chathur Mukham breaks new grounds in the genre in Malayalam

An important scene in Manju Warrier’s film Chathur Mukham has her character Thejaswini – an enterprising woman – standing in a crowd in a temple as another girl, who is believed to have been possessed, is subjected to a mudiyattam ritual complete with an occult priest. It’s a trope that has been ever present in Malayalam horror movies, but here it feels almost subversive when the directors Ranjeet Kamala Sankar and Salil V Sankaran smartly use it to tell a story of an evil spirit. The paranormal force here doesn’t take over the bodies of humans, instead it uses the aid of technology to unleash its vengeance.

For several decades, the horror genre in Malayalam never really pushed boundaries; Fazil’s masterpiece Manichithrathazhu – which combined psychological horror along with family drama – had set the bar high. But more importantly, it was also the Malayali audience’s insistence that a horror film must pass their ‘logic test’ that pulled the filmmakers back from attempting anything novel in this genre.

That’s why Chathur Mukham, despite being low on scares, scores big; the makers have ensured that though the film doesn’t tick every box catering to genre, it convinces the audience just enough to accept this novel theme of an engineer, so obsessed with his project, who decides to take on the evil corporate honcho and its customers through his cell phones, even after his death.

While the technology angle is almost fool-proof, the highlight of the movie is how it lends itself to the story of a social media-obsessed young woman, whose phone is an extension of her personality. The core theme here is how in the world of the Internet, when you feel connected to everyone, you are still isolated and lonely.

The movie follows Thejaswini, who loses her mobile after the tryst in the temple, prompting her to purchase a temporary phone of an unknown brand online. Once she begins using the phone, a series of unexplained events happen that threaten her life. She and her friend are then forced to find out the root cause and race against time to save her life.

In the past few years, there has been Malayalam movies that have tried new ways of telling stories in the horror genre such as E, Cold Case and 9, but all of these were either too focused on the genre elements or had lofty concepts to the point that it targeted only a specific group of audience. Chathur Mukham, in that regard, straddles these along with using comedy and family emotions to tell a story that can be relatable to all sections of viewers. If you take out the supernatural presence in the film, the alienation of those near and dear with the increasing use of technology and how rejection and betrayal consume a person are aspects that would work even in a thriller.

Those behind the film manage to keep it edgy through its visuals that include neon-lit rooms, CCTV and mobile camera footage, all of which again seamlessly melds with the core theme of the film. That’s also where Chathur Mukham succeeds in breaking new grounds in the horror genre in Malayalam. The movie being among the three Indian films to be picked out of the 258 movies from 47 countries at this year’s Bucheon International Film Festival, South Korea, is proof of it raising the bar higher for novel ventures in horror.

Chathur Mukham is currently streaming on Zee5.

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