The much-awaited trailer of Tumbbad is out. Called a fantasy epic thriller, Tumbbad seems to have a strong horror angle too.
A huge mansion, probably belonging to a king, is left abandoned in Tumbbad (a fictitious place). We hear two boys talk about some Sarkar who looked for a treasure his whole life, but found none. They also mention some old woman, whose silhouette we get to see in the trailer.
A poor man (Sohum Shah) breaks into this mansion and comes in contact with a mysterious creature. All we see is a heart beating, attached to the roots of a tree. It's difficult to describe this creature, but we have seen talking trees in The Lord of the Rings franchise and Groot, a superhero from Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy. The tone of the creepy creature in Tumbbad is hard to gauge, with one needing to be all ears to catch what exactly he/she is saying.
The creature in Tumbbad, though, is nothing like anything we have seen before. We hear a female voice, and so perhaps this creature could be the old woman the two boys were earlier talking about. A creepy creature also makes an appearance. Shah’s character wins over the creature with his greed and he pockets some golden treasure.
Now this greed is matched by his son (Muhamed Samad), who not only seeks the treasure but has the gumption to tell his father’s keep (Ronjini Chakraborty) that he will marry her once he grows up. Such sequences are a rarity in Indian films.
The boy finds his way into the pit, but he’s not as lucky as his father. An ancient deity, whose idol has been seen in the poster before, is awakened. The boy refers to him as 'Sujavarnahasteraje'. Sohum Shah immediately tells the boy the name must not be said aloud, much like the Harry Potter character Lord Voldemort?
Is it really the deity or some evil entity that has been awakened? All that we see is an eye-popping out from the pit with a skeleton around it. This eye will remind the viewers of the evil eye in The Ring franchise.
Director duo of Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad are perhaps guilty of giving the prime story out easily in the trailer. However, we can trust them to have a few surprises in store for us.
What the director duo do well in the trailer is that they don’t give much away about their characters. Yes, there is Sohum and Samad, but we don’t really get to know the other characters.
Ronjini Chakraborty gets a brief look in the trailer. Does her character have more to offer? She played a commercial sex worker in Rohit Mittal’s dark film Autohead that was screened at the MAMI Mumbai film festival in 2016. She was competent in that role.
Interestingly, while mythology has been a huge hit on television, and in comic culture, Indian cinema hasn’t quite tapped into the subject. Fed on the Baahubali franchise in a similar genre, Indian fans will hope that Tumbbad will provide a good experience. What the film already has going for it is the visual appeal.
Ship of Theseus (2012) writer Anand Gandhi is the creative producer here and Gandhi appears to have an intriguing mythological story at his disposal. Compared to the teaser, the trailer is a little subpar, nevertheless, here’s a story that holds plenty of promise.
Tumbbad will be released on 12 October.
Watch the trailer below: