Marked short film review

★★

Directed by: #KundanSad

Written by: #ZackAkers

Starring: #JaiGokhale

Film Review by: Shrubaboti Bose

---

It is one of those films where the cinematic motifs are oversimplified and as a result the nearly non-existent story-line falls flat on its face along with the ridiculously predictable filler music, which kills the element of surprise and thus fails in delivering the promised impact of horror to its audience. This film can be considered at best a good attempt bad luck, a hilarious end to a miserable plot. What with hardly any light direction involved, the whole film having been shot in the convenient darkness of the room which suggests a power cut due to the heavy rains, (definitely a perfect atmosphere for the uncanny, though it is unclear as to why the study table lamp is still working until the ghost appears) the protagonist later uses the flash light from the back of his phone as a torch.

In the beginning of the film, the camera pauses on several objects such as skulls perhaps signifying our protagonist engages in occult practices but immediately afterwards we notice a tiny bust of Mahatma Gandhi and it is left unclear as to what is its relevance in the film. Music intensifies every time we are shown the white apparition, however it goes so over the top in trying to be terrifying that it loses its touch. In fact the simple noise of the pencil scratching on the surface of the paper as he sketches brings about more suspense. The bloody mark of an infinity loop left on the glass door is equally cliche and the consequent red footprints that the protagonist finds on the floor do nothing to scare us but instead reinforce the comic effect.

Perhaps the only saving grace was the clever idea of using the sketch in the end to show the white ghostly apparition missing from the graveyard and then as the camera closes in on the landscape again, we realise it has transported our protagonist back to the graveyard where we find them both trapped in the drawing itself. Unfortunately, this idea is far from being an original invention because one has seen similar incidences of the hero becoming trapped inside an inanimate object featured in films time and again. An example that easily comes to our mind is the short film, Ahalya directed by Sujoy Ghosh where the protagonist gets trapped inside a wooden miniature doll. However despite the brevity of the film, lasting for a duration of barely 5 minutes, the acting is commendable for the fact that a story is narrated without using a single dialogue.

---