Kaalo Review

 'Kaalo' comes with a good premise. After all there hasn't been any creature based horror film made in Bollywood and that too while being presented in day horror genre. In that context, one does want to check out what 'Kaalo' is all about as it promises good share of scare factor coupled with thrills.

What one gets to see is a film which is thrilling in parts, has good technical finesse to it but doesn't scare at all. Now how one wishes that the story had enough twists and turns to actually keep you captivated and scared because from the look perspective, 'Kaalo' has to be one of the most original attempts ever.

The film begins with the narration of an age old tale of how the interiors of North India were terrorised by witches. Told in a picture book format, the film soon moves '250 saal baad' as a bus makes it's way through a rocky terrain in Rajasthan. With an ensemble of characters travelling (a not-so-young man, a young girl, a newly wed couple, a photographer and a model, an aged couple, four rogues, a conductor and of course the driver), there is some time spent on character introduction.

As can be expected from a film belonging to this genre, there are shadows and a definite presence of the unknown felt by most of the characters as they all start getting killed one after another. Just like any slasher thriller, here too the focus is on how each and every killing takes place, something that acts as a positive for 'Kaalo'.

However, the sad part is that the film doesn't scare at all. The character of 'Kaalo', once it actually makes it's presence on screen around the middle of the film, isn't really the kind that would scare the day light out of you. Also, the film moves forward in a flat narrative with thrills, action sequences, VFX and cinematography being good but the suspense factor definitely missing.

This is where one feels that while Wilson Louis, the director of the film, did do all in his capacity to make the proceedings interesting, the writing let him down. Case in point being the key male protagonist (Aditya Shrivastava) who is let off by 'Kaalo' not once, not twice but thrice even when she knew that he was being the protector of the girl (Swini Khara) whose blood she was thirsting for.

On a positive front, some of the scenes do stay with you even after the film is through. The way 'Kaalo' buries it's victim under the sand is done well and so are the hallucinations that one of the key characters faces a couple of times. Background score is good as well and compliments the film's narrative. All actors in the film are uniformly okay with none of them either bowling you away with their histrionics or making you look the other way.

Wilson Louis has shown that he is a good technician. Now all he needs is a better script to get his imagination run further wild.

Rating: **