'Kaalo' Review

'Kaalo' Movie Review: Director Wilson Louis’s latest offering Kaalo is perhaps the first Indian horror film to be set and shot entirely in daylight. But does it scare the daylights out of you, the viewer? Sometimes it does, sometimes not.

The film is essentially the story of a witch named Kaalo who kills young girls to attain immortality. She lived in a Rajasthan village named Kulbhata about 250 years ago. But before she could attain immortality, she was killed by the villagers. But she returned from the dead and the scared villagers fled, leaving Kulbhata a ghost village. Anyone who ventures into the village faces the wrath of Kaalo who’s now an ugly creature with bear-feet, grotesque shape, bat wings, and a lot of icky stuff dripping from her limbs.

A bus carrying a bunch of passengers to a nearby village Kuldevi steers into Kulbhata, the witch’s killing field. In the bus is a little girl (Swini Khara), who becomes the prime target of the witch. In the course of the story, every one of the passengers is hacked to death by the blood-thirsty witch. One passenger (Aditya Shrivastav), who’s carrying a lot of explosive material, finally locks horns with the witch to save the girl.

Wilson Louis, who gave the dud Mallika earlier this year, manages to create some really scary moments in the film. But there are a lot of places where the pace slackens, something not good for a horror film. What’s most disappointing is the final showdown between Aditya and Kaalo. The ease with which the witch is slain makes you laugh out loud.

Still, Kaalo is watchable because of some spooky chills it gives and the excellent cinematography by Pushpank Gawde.