The hit Indian horror movie Tumbbad is shocking in the best ways

Human fears are universal, but the expression of those fears is different in every culture — which can be a lot of fun for horror fans. There comes a point where being too steeped in your own culture’s horror stories can undercut the feelings of unfamiliarity and surprise that the genre depends on. Looking to another country for culturally specific fresh takes on scary tropes — like Japan’s Ringu, Spain’s The Orphanage, Iceland’s Lamb, or Taiwan’s Incantation — lets horror fans encounter familiar shocks dressed up in vivid new ways capable of digging under even the most jaded skin. You’ll also find fascinating information about all the different ways you can share your fears.

That’s one of the great joys of Tumbbad, Rahi Anil Barve’s stunning 2018 Hindi-language horror story about gods, greed, and gore. You are already familiar with the basic elements of this film: Man gives in to his vices and faces an supernatural accounting. Western viewers will not be familiar with the story’s specific structure and the imagery that was used. And the graphic, chilling details hit particularly hard because they’re so unexpected. It’s a superb Halloween-season discovery.

India has had a very long history with horror movies. Tumbbad was a hit on release there, likely because it’s so eerie, insistent, and streamlined, and yet so quintessentially an Indian story, rooted in the country’s history and its specific traumas. The story’s three chapters each have different major secrets and discoveries, and they each have a slightly different flavor of horror.

Image: Amazon Prime Video

This is the first, a straightforward bump-into-the-night story with some gruesome and unexpected effects. With a protagonist who knowingly accepts the terrible knowledge and infected himself with it, the second is more Lovecraftian. It helps that the story centers around a forbidden, lost god named Hastar, a name that doesn’t actually come from Indian mythology, but will certainly be familiar to fans of H.P. Lovecraft and his followers, even if he’s been reskinned. With one of horror’s most terrifying reveals, the third chapter builds on the shocks and terror of the first two. Even so, it’s more about creeping dread and inevitability than about jump-scares or graphic violence.

In the first — set in 1918, against the background of Mahatma Gandhi’s early rebellions against British rule — young brothers Vinayak and Sadashiv Rao chafe against poverty in the rural town of Tumbbad. They live in the shadow of a vast, decaying mansion owned by a decrepit hermit named Sarkar, who’s secretly their father. But he’s never acknowledged them, or his connection with their mother (Jyoti Malshe), who’s been his servant and mistress for decades.

Sarkar’s mansion supposedly holds a hidden family fortune. Vinayak in particular feels entitled to a share of the money, which represents not only an escape from his family’s hand-to-mouth life, but the respect and pride of place he longs for as a rich man’s son. Instead, his inheritance is a mysterious obligation to a monstrous old woman who’s chained up in his home, in his mother’s care. The family speaks about her with dread and awe, the way they’d speak about a boogeyman who needs to be propitiated — and as it turns out, with good reason.

Image: Amazon Prime Video

This chapter is set 15 years later in a turbulent period for the British Raj. Now an adult (and played by Bollywood producer Sohum Shah), Vinayak returns to Tumbbad, seeking the fortune he never found as a child — and the old, chained woman, who he sees differently as an adult. He soon returns home to his wife, in Pune’s sprawling, vast city, with mysterious, gold coins. Looking to sell the coins, he enters into an ill-fated deal with Raghav (Deepak Damle), a friend, moneylender, and merchant who’s hoping to bribe his way into a profitable opium-dealing license. Both are motivated by greed and the desire to improve their position, which leads both men to suffer.

In 1947, just after Partition which had reverberated across India but not touched Vinayak or his family, the final chapter opens. Vinayak, who is now in his thirties, must decide what to give to his young son. He loves Vinayak and strives for perfection. Vinayak doesn’t want to give up the family secrets, but his greed means that it is impossible for him to let go. This leaves nothing but the best. Tumbbad sprawling across three generations — and by implication, many, many more. The open question writer-director Rahi Anil Barve asks — the question he started exploring in 1997, when he wrote his first draft of the film at age 18 — is what it takes to stop the cycle of avarice that destroys families and countries with equal alacrity.

All three chapters work together neatly as a kind of dark fairy tale about greed — where it comes from, how it perpetuates itself, and how it can act like a drug, overwhelming the senses and getting its victims addicted. Vinayak is played by Shah as an abusive, contemptuous man. He only cares about himself and wants everyone else to do the same. He’s cruel and selfish, as much the villain of the piece as the dark god his family serves.

Image: Amazon Prime Video

Barve and his crew suggest that he has some empathy for Barve, considering where he comes from. The fable that opens the film says the gods cursed Tumbbad because of Vinayak’s family, and that the perpetual rains engulfing the place are a form of divine wrath. Those storms figure prominently in Barve’s sharp, lurid imagery throughout the film: Whether visiting the Tumbbad mansion or huddling in their own hovel, Vinayak and his mother and brother are perpetually soaked to the skin and plastered in mud. Barve claims that he shot the movie over several years in monsoon season to create the perfect atmosphere. The family doesn’t comment on the rain, because it’s the perpetual backdrop of their lives, but they all look chilled, diluted, and on the verge of washing away entirely. It’s entirely clear why Vinayak dreams of escape, and the wealth to live however he wants.

But Tumbbad lays out a rich metaphor for the ways those dreams leech most of the freedom and happiness out of Vinayak’s life, leaving him in a perpetual nightmare where he dwells on the cost of his wealth, and resents everyone around him who shares in it without paying the price he pays. He can’t let go of his riches, but he can’t fully enjoy them either, which leads him to worse and worse excesses. Crucial history is happening all around him, and his country is suffering, changing, and strengthening, but he’s insulated and isolated himself by focusing only on his own gain. It’s a beautifully crafted trap, built into the heart of an equally beautifully crafted story, where the supernatural horrors are outright terrifying, but Vinayak is far scarier.

Image: Amazon Prime Video

Barve makes sure that all of this hits home by presenting it with a visual richness and lushness that will keep his viewers’ eyes pinned on the screen. In order to create the Tumbbad atmosphere, he used real rural settings to film it. He also relied on practical effects wherever possible to make it more weighty. When CGI does feature, especially in the film’s explosive climax, it’s deliberately contrasted with physical effects to make the action more uncanny and disturbing, rather than trying to blend in with the rest of his world.

These colors are Tumbbad are unbeatable, particularly the ghastly, raw reds that define Vinayak’s secret and its price. And the imagery is equally vivid, leading to unforgettable moments that even longtime horror fans won’t have seen on screen before. The goal of horror films is to get audiences out their comfort zones and allow them to feel fearful and uneasy. TumbbadWith its dependence on Indian mythology and Indian history as its flavor, They just go further than many horror stories. This leads them to darker and exalted places.

TumbbadIs streaming on Amazon Prime Video.