There is something very endearing about horror movies that make us chuckle even when they are hell-bent on scaring us.
I have always believed that the makers of good, hardcore horror films are very talented but slightly sadistic people. Whereas the directors and writers of horror-comedies feel like they are nice, sweet people who want to make sure that while we get our jollies from getting petrified, we don’t spend our nights wondering if a ghost is sitting on the edge of our bed.
Director Aditya Sarpotdar is one such sweet director. His ‘Kakuda’ is a well produced, sharply directed, entertaining film with charming performances and good laughs. Its spooky scenes are scary, and its comic moments calm the nerves.
The film is set in a fictional village called Ratori in Uttar Pradesh where a ghost called Kakuda lurks. He doesn’t lurk about all the time, just once a week, on a specific day, at a specific time.
The deal is that all houses in the village must have a small door next to their main entrance door, and this mini door must be open at 7.15 pm, every Tuesday.
If it is, Kakuda will glide past the house without incident. But if the door is not open, he will huff and puff and do his whole curse thing, which is deadly, humiliating and involves a hunchback.
Sunny (Saqib Saleem), a sweet, innocent young man lives in Ratori and believes in the curse. Like all villagers, he too rushes home to open the small door at the anointed hour. But his educated, modern girlfriend Indu (Sonakshi Sinha) does not live in Ratori and rubbishes all this Kakuda and curse business as superstition.
Indu’s father, meanwhile, is bent on getting her married to an English-speaking gentleman. Sunny doesn’t speak a word of English and his best friend is the local barber. So, on Indu's insistence, the two lovers elope and get married. By the time he reaches home to open the small door, it is too late.
Enter, ghost-hunter Victor (Riteish Deshmukh).
Victor, who looks like a cross between Indiana Jones and Hell’s Angels, has an otherworldly charm that draws ghosts and witches to him. Sometimes they seek him out to chit-chat and sometimes for help with their daily ghostly chores.
His interest, however, lies in those angry spirits who scare and harass humans. He summons them through his charcoal-on-canvas paintings, and while they hover in the air screaming and hissing, politely tells them about the futility of their fear-mongering.
When Victor arrives in Ratori, he is drawn to a scarecrow who looks like he froze while practising Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ step.
Together with Indu, Victor slowly uncovers the mystery of Kakuda's curse and figures out how he can be stopped from turning all the villagers into replicas of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. En route, he also discovers and frees another hurting, wandering loitering, lost soul).
Bollywood has a long history of horror comedies going back to the 1965 film, ‘Bhoot Bangla’, in which ghosts were played by men with protruding bellies. In one sequence, they wore spandex body suits that had skeletons drawn on them, and danced like drunk wedding guests around Mehmood and R.D. Burman.
This delightful genre disappeared during Bollywood's angry man years and was resurrected by Priyadarshan in 2007 with 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa'. Since then we have had many jolly horrors, including my all-time favourite zombie-comedy, 'Go Goa Gone' (2013), and Rajkumar Rao-Shraddha Kapoor's superhit, 'Stree'.
But 2024 seems to be the year of director Aditya Sarpotdar and his horror comedies.
His 'Munjya', also a hehe-haha-horror, is the surprise hit of the year, and now his second film, 'Kakuda', is streaming on OTT.
Sarpotdar's 'Kakuda' is not a contender for the best horror-comedy, but it is fun, enjoyable and feel-good. Written by Avinash Dwivedi and Chirag Garg, it has a strong screenplay and crisp, funny dialogue. Its cinematography is quite stunning and editing is sharp.
It also has lovely performances by Saqib Saleem and Sonakshi Sinha, who has a double role. The highlight of the film, though, is Riteish Deshmukh, the ghost hunter, and Mahesh Jadhav, who plays Kakuda. Deshmukh is not a great actor, but he has excellent comic timing and does something very interesting here — he keeps breaking the fourth wall (the conceptual, imaginary wall that separates films from the audience), and is often in direct communication with us. That's cheating, but it's fun.
Watch 'Kakuda'. Like many of us, it grudgingly believes in ghosts, but has the confidence to laugh at its silly beliefs.
Cast: Sonakshi Sinha, Saqib Saleem, Riteish Deshmukh, Aasif Khan, Rajendra Gupta, Yogendra Tiku, Mahesh Jadhav
Direction: Aditya Sarpotdar
Rating: 3/5
Streaming on Zee 5
