Kumari (2022)
Kumari is an Indian horror movie that came out in 2022 in the langauge of malayalam.
How I watched: Netflix
For the short of it: A woman gets married to the descendant of a man who is responsible for his village being cursed AF.
The long of it?
Yo well have I got a good one for you today! Well idk I guess it depends where your perception is at. Kumari is named after our main character who is said to be an orphan for this family. So one day like totally out of the blue her uncle is like "You know what? I'll think I'll marry you off to this wealthy family so go TF over there. K bye."
Off she goes. This goes without saying but she has no idea who this dude is but word on the street (by that I mean her bro) is that the man she is about to marry is a bit of an odd duck if you know what I mean. There is apparently a stigma surrounding him. Dude's name is Dhruvan.
The thing about Dhruvan's family though is that what we need to do here is go back back back...
This movie initially opens up with the preface of a grandmother telling her grandson about the story of a goddess who fell in love with a mortal and bore 2 children. Those children were taking sibling rivalry to a whole new level and mother goddess had enough that shit so she exiled one, Chathan, to the mountains and Gari Devan to the underworld. Yeah. Out of all the names in the world she decided to name her child GARI. What even. Well, humanity started segregating themselves down to who worshiped who. So on and so forth.
Continuing this story, a man named Thuppan killed a boy who was #TeamChathan so Chatham hella cursed his village. Wanting to put an end to the curse, he sought out protection in the form of his arch nemesis. So now Thuppan is now #TeamDevan.
Dhruvan is Thuppan's descendant.
Kumari ends up arriving to this aforementioned village and she has no idea what shit storm she just walked in to. The history, the wrath, the pain, the WTFuckery that is being unveiled. Oh boy.
Can you believe this movie is 137 minutes long? That's over 2 hours, yo! Look on the good side of things: it's a decent indian horror flick. However, I definitely do have my gripes about this movie.
First off, the parallels with Tumbbad which came out in 2018 (4 years before Kumari). I saw Tumbbad some time last year and it is still one of my all time favorite movies but it still irked me that Kumari shares a LOT of simularities. I won't name them all so I won't sound like a cry baby but that's what kept me from truly enjoying this movie because of just how many things in common these 2 movies share. For example, starting off the movie with a family member telling a story of a goddess to a young male adolescent in which one of the offspring of said goddess got exiled. Not a straight up rip off by any means but you can tell there was definitely some inspiration one way or another.
A few other things irked me about this movie such as the weird ass musical number in the beginning of that movie? What the FUCK was that? Honestly, I almost noped out of this movie due to how annoyingly optimistic it was. In retrospect, it was to symbolize the calm before the storm. I will admit though, lowkey that song was a bop. Still though, I was in a state of confuzzlement if what I was seeing was in fact an actual horror movie.
To answer your question, it is indeed a horror movie! There was at least one other song number until shit got real and at a certain point there was no more of those singy songy bullshit anymore as the plot was beginning to disturbingly progress.
Did I mention it was a long movie? This time, I did not mind it. There was just so many events and plotpoints to be unveiled that my eyes were totally glued to the screen. More crap happens such as when **SPOILER** Kumari finds herself pregnant and quickly finds out it is not a good sign whatsoever so she needs to go to ONE of the gods for protection. When the showdown happens, it gets crunk, yo. CRUNK!
You know, the more I think about this, the more I am convinced this would have probably been better off as a mini series. A short maybe 6 episode TV show would have been the better route but ehhhh who cares now at this point?
After watching a movie it is always a habit of mine to check other people's opinions on the movie. Upon checking out r/MalayalamMovies a lot of people actually hated this movie! WTF you smoking bros! I honestly enjoyed Kumari, not gonna lie. There was interesting action scenes and the character development (or reverse however you want to look at it). It was far from perfect but I was mostly satisfied with how this movie turned out. Many people did not like the ending and I'm like WHAT? It was a decent ending. Chill your balls, folks.
Do I just have bad taste in movie or something? I thought this was an above average movie and it hit my heart in all the right places. Totally would recommend.
With that being said, what is my verdict?
