An Indian-American teenager struggling with her cultural identity has a falling out with her former best friend and, in the process, unwittingly releases a demonic entity that grows stronger by feeding on her loneliness.
Megan Suri stars as Sam and she carries us through this journey as the lonely teen struggling with both socialising and her cultural insecurities. Its a decent performance, not very convincing performance. I mean shes cool and all but not mind blowing. I think it’s a role where we could have got more, more depth. Mohana Krishnan as Tamira on the other hand was slightly better. She captures that loneliness.. that we all fear…not me though.
The production is a tricky one. So they went for this dark aesthetic purposely to capture that evil aura and the darkness helped to emphasise the demons eyes in scenes. it made for some struggle scenes sometimes but I also get it. we doing horror. Based around Hindi culture, I found it interesting.
The film features a lot of Hindi dialogue which again… pros and cons. It drives the authenticity of the cultural displays but there are scenes where they are speaking in Hindi saying specific chants which weren’t accompanied with subtitles…
The demon features an ok design, yes scary and creepy but the lack of gore does take away from the threat we are dealing with here. The writing is there, the idea is there, the execution just wasn’t.
Overall it unfortunately isn’t going to carry this years Halloween flag. It will be in that haunted house but it wont be championing the crib. Solid cultural representation and the story is slow. The first sign of something actually scary is so far into the movie you may forget it’s a horror. The threat we are dealing with here needed an R Rating. Not enough risks were taken. Something was missing. A very lacklustre, unclear and weak ending doesn’t help. Film was unsure if it was giving us a cliffhanger or not. Ending just felt rushed. Will make for a decent at home watch on the couch… just aint for the big screen.
Do you want to see a sequel? How many jump scares got you? Did you find it tedious as well? Which other religious demons should grace our screens?
