a review of

ℍ𝕆𝕆ℙ𝕋𝕆𝔹𝔼ℝ 𝔼𝕃𝔼𝕍𝔼ℕ ℕ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋 𝕋𝕎𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕐-𝕋ℍℝ𝔼𝔼: I watched this one (whose title translates to "What Happened on April 28th?) for this year's Indian horror requirement mainly because there were barely any reviews on Letterboxd and thought it'd be worth blazing a trail for others to follow (or not). I won't claim to be any kind of an expert on either Hindi or Telugu cinema, so it's hard to tell whether the abrupt tonal shifts, mostly between minimally-written domestic melodrama and extremely broad kooky-character comedy with highly-sanitized dips into supernatural horror and thriller plotting, are just a cultural thing (along with the de rigeur musical dance sequences) or if first-time writer/director Veera Swamy intended it to be this kind of surreal mishmash? But as it is, it takes a setup that seems tailor-made for a Stephen King pastiche a la THE SHINING/THE DARK HALF/SECRET WINDOW (the main character is a writer in need of inspiration who takes his family on an impromptu retreat to the country) and turns it into a wacky family-vacation comedy that nonetheless contains some pretty thematically oogy stuff, namely a shockingly G-rated home-invasion/rape scene that feels like if Michael Haneke made a Disney Channel original movie.