Uneasy lies the head in a dystopian world
Outfitted with a bold storyline, Ghoul is more than Netflix’s first original horror series in India, finds
Strike the deal with your blood and out of the smokeless fire, the ghul (ghoul) will come. This essentially sounds like the beginning of a scary tale one would share around a campfire on a dark, moonless night. But it could also work as a prayer, or a curse, from a man with a broken heart. In Patrick Graham’s Ghoul, it acts as a call to the avenger one wishes would remain trapped in folklore.
If the idea of an inhuman being walking among us isn’t scary enough, imagine a world where your books have been burned, schools and universities have been shut down, and all constitutional rights have been suspended in the wake of widespread sectarian violence. This world, where the sun never seems to shine, is something that’s labelled as the “near future”.
Hot on the heels of its first Indian original, Sacred Games, videostreaming giant Netflix’s second Indian outing is through Ghoul, an aptly named project as it makes foray into the horror genre. Written and directed by Graham, an Englishman who’s been working in Mumbai’s film industry for a few years now, Ghoul is a three-part miniseries.
Released on Friday, Ghoul stars the dependable Radhika Apte as Nida Rahim, a specialist in advanced interrogation techniques. She may still be wet behind the ears without any on-ground experience, but her job profile is enough to scare off the uniformed guards she encounters in a world where the government controls everything.
Rahim’s character is that of an almost-graduate who holds a stellar track record in an elite academy and is given a high-priority task much before she expects it. The portrait reminds us of a certain Clarice Starling from the Hannibal Lecter universe. But the similarity ends there. While Starling may have the trust of her superiors, the unsuspecting Rahim is seen only as a pawn by her immediate seniors, Sunil Dacunha (Manav Kaul) who heads a detention centre, and an interestingly brash Ratnabali Bhattacharjee as Laxmi Das.
Graham’s world is all too familiar, if only in theory. This is a place where seditious literature includes a collection of nursery rhymes and books on art and science. This is a country where people are taken away from their homes in the dead of the night for reconditioning, or as the unseen but all-powerful government calls it, a “wapsi”.
This is a government that isn’t answerable to its people, and its youngsters are all victims of a culture of brainwashing where questions aren’t welcome. It is this culture that Rahim relies on when she turns in her own father to the government for reconditioning. He’s a lecturer who dared to write notes from outside the government-prescribed syllabus. It is in this backdrop of a dystopian world that the ghoul is called up. One almost finds oneself welcoming it. But only up till before all the bloodshed.
A lot of Indian productions, especially those that deal in horror or spycraft, have the tendency to treat the audience as children who are in need of hand-holding. Ghoul shares the same problem. This slows down the series. But things pick up once the ghoul actually comes into play. Frankly, one expects the ghoul to continue to be in action throughout the series, but setting up all the cards takes time. And we can’t wait for the ghoul to knock them down.
Some narratives are accused of attempting to rewrite histories. Graham’s Ghoul is not that. Instead, it takes episodes from a very real world, be it ISIS-inflicted areas or an India where the “wrong” surname could prompt a search for contraband items (think beef). The presence of a ghoul is perhaps the only aspect of the film that hasn’t actually been a part of our national consciousness.
The production has a way of clawing into your head, but maybe not in the way of The Conjuring 2 and Annabelle: Creation, some of the films the director has a soft corner for. Horror feels more of a supplementary flavour, but then one remembers horror isn’t only about screamfests.
Ghoul is high on ideas and low on scares of the supernatural kind. But perhaps the dystopian nation that Graham has painted is a good scare in itself.