'Kakuda' Review: Are Laughs Enough to Sustain a Horror Comedy?

We’ve had enough horror comedies come out of Bollywood in recent times to reignite interest in the genre that we’d lost to time but not enough to cause a fatigue. And the most recent addition to the genre was Aditya Sarpotdar’s Munjya but that is not the only horror comedy from the director to release recently – Kakuda dropped on Zee5 on 11 July.

Kakuda is set in the fictional village of Ratauri and the village might as well be fictional for the people outside it as well. The movie opens with an elderly man getting off near his village—one that the bus conductor didn’t even know was there – and cycle home like his life depends on it. For the people of Ratauri, getting home on time (7.15 PM on Tuesdays to be exact) is actually a matter of life or death.

If you aren’t home by the designated time to open a smaller door next to your house’s main door, the ‘kakuda’ would attack you. This attack leaves you with a bump on your back and the clock for your demise starts ticking.

So far, Kakuda is Stree meets The Ring which eventually even wades into In the Tall Grass territory – the novelty usually present in the Maddock Films horror universe is absent. So, what works for the film is the cast and their comic timing.

Kakuda stars Sonakshi Sinha as Indira, a woman who is fed up of her father bringing home a string of matches for her which results in her deciding to elope with her boyfriend Sunny (Saqib Saleem). To the film’s credit, this simple setup is given enough detailing to not feel tiresome. The essays on ‘cow’ and ‘best friend’ somehow work as punch lines.

As things would stand, Indira has to figure out a way to deal with the Kakuda curse with the help of a ghost hunter named Victor (Riteish Deshmukh) with Sunny and his best friend Kilvish (Asif Khan). These are not characters with too many layers – all their characters are fit into the roles they play in the narrative and aren’t postured to rise above it. Sonakshi Sinha is the film’s anchor and that is refreshing to see in a horror movie and she shoulders that responsibility well.

Saleem doesn’t have a lot to do in the role but every time he is on screen he leaves enough of an impact to keep his character in your mind as you watch the show. While Deshmukh’s comic timing works, the ghost hunter character looks too much like ones we’ve seen before. The ‘kooky’ ghost hunter gimmick worked earlier but this character doesn’t get anything new that would make it interesting. Even in the gimmick, there has to be something connecting the character to its setting or its universe; that doesn’t happen here.

The film’s best performance comes from Khan who is a laugh riot – every single dialogue and reaction is funny. He makes every joke land – for instance, when he mentions that an elderly woman eating a sugarcane ‘looks immortal’.

Even his weird rivalry with Victor is hilarious. The main issue with Kakuda is that the script feels half-baked – it follows the three-act structure and that’s about it. This is especially disheartening because there’s a brilliant cast at their disposal and the story has promise.

The other drawback is that the actual entity of ‘Kakuda’ was more menacing when we couldn’t see it so maybe being a Lovecraftian horror would’ve benefited the story more. But the show does win points for its conversation around gender even if isn’t as detailed as films like Stree. When misfortune befalls Sunny, fingers are pointed at Indira even though she is the only person trying to help him and even her sister’s story is a product of how prevalent patriarchy is in the village. Something as simple as sleepwalking gets intertwined with her ‘honour’ and one can’t help but wonder if her confinement is purely for her ‘safety’.

There is so much to like about Kakuda but it’s a pity that those things get left behind in the ‘promise’ more than the ‘execution’. Despite the laughs and the acting, there is just not enough horror or mystery to have an impact.