PremiumKumari movie review: Lacklustre script plays demon to Aishwarya Lekshmi, Shine Tom Chacko’s horror thriller
The second half of Kumari makes you wonder where the movie could have gone had it some more budget and a better script, considering the start it got
Last Updated: 05.17 PM, Oct 28, 2022
Story: After an upper caste member murders a young boy, his family and village are cursed by one of two supernatural forces that were banished to its forests. The former summons another demonic force from the depths of hell to protect them for twelve generations. Kumari, who gets married to a member of the family, arrives at the village just before the protection runs out.
Review: Superstitions, tales of chaathans (spirits) and demons have always found space in stories passed on for generations in Kerala. With Kumari, director Nirmal Sahadev has mined these folktales as well as tried to resurrect the horror genre through tales that have gone missing in Malayalam cinema of late.
The movie starts off, much like Nirmal’s Ranam, with a backstory of where most of the story is set – a village that becomes host for evil forces, curses and rituals. The initial few scenes directly takes the audience to this village, its ruling family, how their actions invoked a curse, leading them to seek help that literally came back to bite them. The movie’s protagonist Kumari (Aishwarya Lekshmi) enters 12 generations later into the family, which is now just a shadow of its former self. But the family’s intention isn’t to bring them back to their heydays, instead it is to extend their protection from a curse and for that they have to offer a sacrifice. In what form and how is what forms the thrilling elements of the film.
Nirmal, who has also scripted the movie, has managed to effectively transport the audience into the world of Kumari and the village where supernatural forces are worshiped. The movie’s cinematography and art department deserve a lot of credit for this, creating an atmospheric forest, an eerie ancestral home and supernatural forces. We get glimpses of the family’s past through stories, building up the tension in the first half. But this soon fizzles out when it is revealed what’s at stake. In fact, the latter half relies entirely on the performances and the final showdown that the story, which was what kept the viewer invested, takes a backseat. While the use of sequences that mirrored the past was laudable, it didn’t offer any new insight as the movie went down a predictable path in the second half. It almost makes you wonder where the movie could have gone had it some more budget and a better script, considering the start it got.
Kumari, however, does have some strong performances from its female characters – Aishwarya Lekshmi, Surabhi Lakshmi and Swasika Vijay. Aishwarya drives the movie. Her character brings light to the village and this is brilliantly captured; her brave turn in the second half too keeps the audience engaged. Surabhi as the elder ascetic is a terrifying presence. Shine Tom Chacko, who gets a meaty role as Dhruvan, however, goes overboard at times. His reactions and body language, sometimes, doesn’t feel like they belong to the era where the story is set. Rahul Madhav, Shivajith Nambiar and Giju John are decent in the roles they are offered.
Verdict: While the makers of Kumari builds a fantastical world where the horror-thriller is set, a lacklustre script and predictable second half mean there’s hardly any scares to keep the audience engrossed.