Review: 'Kaalo' is a juvenile ‘horror’ film

Before you start wondering about the film’s title, let me save you the trouble. Kaalo is named after the lead character who is a witch! Yes, a black-cloak-donning, monstrous-looking witch with the quintessential crooked nose and bat-like wings (that’s an innovation now), straight out of children’s fairy tales.

 

Kulbaata, an eerie town in Rajasthan, is an uninhabited place now. Years ago, when it was populated, it was plagued with the presence of a witch, Kaalo, who wanted to attain immortality by killing children. The villagers somehow managed to kill the witch (how exactly do you finish off a witch with supernatural powers?). But she returned with a vengeance, forcing them all to flee.

 

Now, 250-year-old Kaalo is the only inhabitant of Kulbaata, preying on vulnerable victims who happen to pass through the ghost town.
 

It so happens that a tourist bus with all kinds of passengers — one honeymooning couple, one NRI couple, one aged couple, a 10-year-old child, a young man (of course, there has to be a hero!) and four lustful rowdies — passes through Kulbaata. Kaalo is instantly drawn to the bus because of the child.

What we witness next is murder after grotesque murder until the young man and the child are the only survivors. They survive to the very end, as the hero ‘kills’ the witch by piercing two knitting needles into her eyes and setting her on fire, all within the blink of an eye (how ingenious)!

Of course, the film offers you an astounding view of the deserts of Rajasthan, from the miles of barren land and sand dunes to cacti and abandoned houses. There is definitely a feeling of cinematic astuteness in almost all the sequences. But that is not enough to salvage the film as the story and screenplay wreck it effortlessly.
 

Not only does the film have continuity problems galore, but there are also unbelievably dim-witted occasions like a man who is being chased by the witch and running for his life going back to fetch his hat! Needless to say, he is devoured by her. Or a skimpily clad woman posing provocatively for photographs in a deserted place four metres away from the punks drooling at her.