Tumbbad

As a unique historical fantasy film coming out of India, ‘Tumbbad’ is a triumph for the filmmakers and a high-point for Hindi horror cinema. - Jake Watt Read Jake's full article... https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/article/review-tumbbad-visually-rich-hindi-horror Head to https://www.maketheswitch.com.au/revelation for more Revelation Perth International Film Festival reviews.

A **very** atypical Hindi film in that it is both a fantasy and a horror. It is a well-told fable about greed. Totally worth the watch!

<em>'Tumbbad'</em> is very good folk horror fare. It's a movie that feels unusual for what Bollywood tends to offer, at least the sorta films that I've checked out from this part of the world. Aside from the evidently irremovable music interlude, it felt different - a good different. I would say that the story gets a bit underwhelming across the middle portion, though the opening chunk and final moments are impressive - both featuring young actors, in my opinion this flick is at its strongest with Dhundiraj Jogalekar and Mohammad Samad (plus Jyoti Malshe, Rudra Soni) onscreen. The special effects for when the characters are involved with Hastar aren't the greatest, but the film undoubtedly makes it work and it still adds the required creepiness. The practical effects for the 'old woman' are excellent though, very unnerving. Story-wise it is sturdy, it's fairly straightforward in terms of the message of greed but it works and is portrayed nicely. As noted, if not for a meandering middle I'd be rating this higher. All the same, it's a suitably entertaining movie and one that's worthy of recommendation.

*Tumbbad* understands that greed becomes much more interesting when it stops looking like a character flaw and starts looking like a family trade. Vinayak Rao does not stumble into a cursed treasure and immediately lose his mind. He learns the system. Descend into the earth. Distract Hastar with food. Take a little gold. Get out. Repeat. What begins as an encounter with something forbidden gradually becomes a procedure, refined over decades and eventually taught to his son. The cleverness of *Tumbbad* is that damnation starts to resemble competent administration. Everything around Vinayak reinforces that appetite. His monstrous grandmother has to be fed while being kept asleep. Hastar is defined by insatiable hunger. Vinayak discovers that hunger can be managed and exploited, provided he is disciplined about satisfying his own. The film keeps circling the same question: when does taking enough become wanting more simply because more remains available? The production design makes that argument physical. Above ground, Tumbbad is trapped beneath relentless rain, its buildings and mechanisms seeming to belong to a world that has been rotting for years. Below it, Vinayak enters something altogether more biological: red, fleshy, pulsating, less a treasure chamber than a womb. Hastar is not merely buried in the landscape. He appears to have been incompletely born from it. That makes the film's folk horror unusually literal. The old god, the curse and the wealth are all bound to one place, and nobody needs to unleash anything upon the wider world. The horror can remain perfectly local because human beings will keep returning to it voluntarily. There is always somebody willing to go back down the hole. The first chapter takes its time establishing this mythology, perhaps a little too much time, but the patience pays off once repetition becomes escalation. By the final section, the carefully practised ritual has become inheritance, and inheritance has become catastrophe. *Tumbbad* looks ancient without feeling antique, as though somebody dug up a folktale rather than wrote one. Dark, strange and wonderfully tactile, it gives greed a god, a birthplace and, most importantly, a reliable supply of customers. --- Reviewed by FolknHell, the folk horror film podcast · folknhell com Hear the full FolknHell podcast discussion of Tumbbad: folknhell com/tumbbad-review Along with our other reviews, transcripts and episodes at: folknhell com