Kumari

An amazing concept, but fails to impress in execution.

First 15 minutes of the movie, I was very hopefull that this is going to be a nice movie. The concept of the folklore story was very exciting. The movie nicely establishes the plot but failed to emotionaly invest me in the story. The visuals were amazing. The cinematography by Abraham joseph was a big positive. Aishwarya lakshmi was good. The songs were nice, especially the one introducing kumaris character. Amazing set designs. The technical department did a great job. All the actors who came as extras did a good job.

As a fantasy movie, the movie fails to set the rules in the world. So feels pretty inconsistent in most parts. Shine tom chakos character did not work for me (his sound modulation didnot work either). Could have focused on writing a little more.

Good effort, nice concept, but misses the mark somewhere.

Let me come straight to the point, Surabhi Lakshmi was terrific. The casting was perfect, the colour grading & all is perfect as well. But it's the screenplay which falls flat after that 1st half & the animations could have been better. The character of Shine Tom Chacko can be a little irritating at times but he did shine in his role. Aishwarya lekshmi did her part well especially during the 2nd half. The timelines in the movie is quite confusing as the songs & certain aspects do not match with the time period. The songs were unnecessary & few of the BGM seems a mismatch to the time period. Aesthetically the movie is quite appealing but the story seems thin. The opening sequence is literally the same as tumbbad. Give it a watch for a Saturday night movie.

Kumari, produced by Prithviraj, promises a lot of intrugue, mystique and thrills in the trailer. It succeeds in providing the intrigue and the mystique but fails in the thrills dept. The movie is the fable of a woman named Kumari who gets married and travels to a small village steeped in folklore and the tale of two opposing demons. The first half does a good job of building up the storyline and sets clear expectations of what to expect in the second half. The background score also sets the mood of the film. I expected more horror elements but all you get are a few jump scares which was disheartening.

The second half carries on from the first in much the same fashion and your expectation builds up only to be let down in the climax. Without spoiling, I'll just say that the prosthetics looked cheap and the action underwhelming. Also, what were Shine's dialogues in the movie? He kept mumbling in a raspy voice all throughout and I was not able to understand more than half of what he said.

Overall, the acting is top notch by entire cast. The stand out performance for me was Surabhi Lakshmi. Absolutely amazing. She also had to learn a weird malayalam dialect which required subtitles for the viewers to understand.

6/10.

Barring a few scenes, the movie is refreshing and with a lot new and chilling ideas. Aishwarya Lakshmi as Kumari is really terrific. She excels in many scenes.

Apart from her, Shine Tom Chacko, Swasika Vijay and Surabhi Lakshmi make their presence felt.

The background score by Jakes Bejoy is pulsating and a couple of songs are really good.

Nirmal Sahadev's story is a heady mixture of fantasy and horror. As the director, he did a clean job of presenting an eminently watchable movie, if you can excuse him for a few boring scenes.

The locations are very good and carefully chosen by the movie team. Overall, a paisa vasool movie.

First the good points * Interesting horror side engaging with tales of demons, spirits tantra and a look at ancient kerala and landlords thamburatti, *Simple costumes, real outlook without glamour and fanfare * Authentic tantrik practices and temple worship system depicted

Spoilers * Car, Bikes, Wrist watch are shown but then in the landlord house there is no electricity and oil lamps are used * Dhruvan cuts off three fingers in later part of movie the fingers are back again * In modern time of car, bikes the labour and birth of child is done in house with midwives.

Murder is committed in open fields no cops or police

Actual year is not disclos.