What did I just watch? Wow! Just wow!! To get the chills of fear and feel uneasy from watching a Malayalam movie hasn't happened to me in a long time.
Bhoothakalam. A trip into the psyche of the human mind interlaced with horror elements and superlative perfomances by Revathy and Shane Nigam!
The movie taps into the deepest parts of your senses, taking you along with the characters into their home and mind and then evoking in you, all the emotions and feelings that they enact/feel! And that's too damn creepy! I mean that in a good way.
Director Rahul Sadasivan captures the disturbed minds of a Mother and Son effectively, showing their strained relationship, placing the scenes inside a home, in natural settings and making us feel like we are a part of the narrative, due to the very fact that this is probably how every Parent/Children relationship is in Kerala. The bond and love for a Mother is always there but on the surface level there is always resentment and dissatisfaction.
I had watched the Director's previous work, "Red Rain", a sci-fi story which he calls an experimental movie. It was quite ahead of it's times and being a sci-fi junkie, I liked it. It was very underrated, not getting the recognition it deserved. It had good actors like Narain, including foreign artists which was quite rare in Malayalam movies and a unique story of connecting Kerala's Red Rain phenomenon with extra terrestrial presence. The CGI was pretty decent enough too. I appreciate Rahul for showing the will to try something new back then. I guess the general Malayali audience wasnt ready to accept such genres in Malayalam movies back then, with the popular saying being.....leave these themes to Hollywood!
But times have changed and so has a movie goer's taste in cinema. People are well aware of how movies are made around the world as they are readily accessible at their finger tips with the advent of OTT platforms.
This time around Rahul manages to move and shock the audience with a superb story, script and screenplay. And to get two supremely talented stars from two different generations to perform together was the icing on the cake. I have never seen Revathy like this. As a distraught and mentally disturbed mother, she nails it! Shane gets better and better with each movie. A sequence in a metro stands out. His helplessness when he realises that his girlfriend also doesnt understand his plight was enacted brilliantly. He was able to comminicate his mental trauma with subtle facial expressions and body language. Definitely a very talented actor. The director said in an interview that he wrote the story with Revathy and Shane in mind, hoping they will eventually agree to do the movie. Saiju Kurup's mental health counsellor character is probably used to bring out the viewer's rational thought process in such situations. A good performance by him also. One main character to be metioned here is the House itself! Is it haunted? Or it is just bad mouthed about coz of it's horrific past? The neighbours contribute a lot in that aspect. Just like how it happens in real life. Such things makes us identify more with the movie.
An intriguing movie that is open to interpretation. The final 15/20 minutes of the movie is quite terrifying. Without giving any spoilers.....One would think.....Are the apparitions real? Is it something the Mother and Son manifest due to their disturbed mental state? Something that made them understand as well as stand up for each other? It could be interpreted as a Mother and Son's journey filled with trials and tribulations, towards self discovery but cloaked as a horror movie. Whatever be the case, the Director effectively makes us tensed to the core! He makes us fear the dark corners of the house, the shadows and the silence. The brillianlty used bgm makes the fear much more gripping! Kudos to Music Director Gopi Sundar for that. And hats off to Rahul for emotionally bonding us to the characters and scaring us without the usual horror tropes used in countless other movies! The title of the movie has an interesting word play to it. The word "Bhootham" alone means Ghost. And "Bhoothakalam" means one's past. Food for thought!
Definitely watch BHOOTHAKALAM. You will have questions. There will be discussions. And that's always good.
Watch it at anytime but I do suggest a late night viewing as it's the perfect time for such a movie. Enjoy!
