Kapkapiii Review – Rediff.com movies

What grabs your attention is the end credit which has a montage of BTS pictures of Sangeeth Sivan from the sets. He is smiling, chatting, laughing with his team, notes Mayur Sanap.

When you decide to submit yourself to a determinedly bad film, there sometime lies a possibility of finding joy in its absurdities.

We call them so-bad-it’s-good movies.

But how do you make sense of a film that’s just utterly clueless about its existence?

Watching Kapkapiii, the latest from the horror-comedy bandwagon, will have you facing such questions.

The trailer had me believing that this could be a breezy watch given all the trappings of a giddy popcorn entertainer.

The winning horror-comedy formula is there.

The cast is fair.

And it’s a remake of Jithu Madhavan’s Malayalam hit Romancham, the director who later gained wider recognition with Aavesham.

However, there’s nothing original or interesting about this Hindi rendition barring its tongue-twisting title.

For a final film from the late director Sangeeth Sivan, it really feels unfortunate.

The plot is centred on a group of friends who live in a rented bungalow. Most of them are jobless and have nothing better to do.

The most mischievous of the group is Manu (Shreyas Talpade) who, out of curiosity, experiments with a makeshift Ouija board from a dusty carom board.

What initially believed as a harmless prank turns into ghostly misadventure as Manu and his friends become privy to an unknown supernatural force.

Staying true to its Malayalam counterpart, Kapkapiii intertwines frights and fun, but to a very little to no success.

Sivan, best known for directing Kyaa Kool Hain Hum and Yamla Pagla Deewana 2, veers towards humour than scares, resulting into an off balance of comedy and horror.

But even the so-called humour falls flat, given the poor writing.

“Usse man to man baat karni hogi,” a character says.

“Madhu to man chalega?‘, a girl named Madhu, curiously asks.

A barrage of similar punchlines are thrown at us throughout its two hours and 20 minutes runtime.

As for horror, cliché tropes like dimly lit background, creepy figures in dark, flickering lights, and cheesy jump scares appear occasionally to create some sense of dread. But it all falls flat.

After the film reaches one-and-a-half hour mark, Tusshar Kapoor makes an entry as a mysterious friend, who adds another layer of absurdity to this already exhausted narrative.

The film then culminates on a cliff-hanger that teases a sequel. But this final twist is so haphazardly introduced that it renders the ongoing film callously incomplete.

You feel cheated, but, of course, this film doesn’t care.

What grabs your attention is the end credit which has a montage of BTS pictures of Sangeeth Sivan from the sets. He is smiling, chatting, laughing with his team.

There appears a message, ‘We miss you and your infectious smile.’

This ends up as the only lingering prospect.

Kapkapiii Review Rediff Rating: