| What's it about: A supernatural thriller — if one may conveniently seek a reference-genre — Sacred Evil adapts a story by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, about the church, religion, faith and the enigma of evil.
It's the story of a traumatised nun, who continuously sees frightening visions of an indeterminate past, until a Wiccan (Sarika) is brought into the convent to exorcise Martha of her demons.
Like the ominous mood and the mild intensity of the narrative, the plot moves in mysterious, if somewhat simplistic ways. The co-directors alternate between the nun's traumatised present and young vivacious Claudia's technicoloured, but tortured past, with a flair for colours that glow with a hidden vivacity.
What's hot: Sacred Evil derives its positive energy from the utterly sincere adaptation of the original material. Though some of the actors are unrecognisable, that proves to be a blessing in disguise (pun intended!). The anonymity provided by the unexposed cast gives the co-directors the freedom to go into areas of the human psyche where fear, insecurity and guilt are allowed free movement.
The narrative moves fluently from the present and the past. Whether it's the forbidding ambience of the church or Kolkata in the 1940s, the French cinematographer Ivan Kozelka furnishes the frames with colours that we've not seen before. We must credit this film for its colour and starkness. We may not like howthe characters behave within the bizarre situations created in the plot.
But we cannot take our eyes off the fascinating frames. The performances look unrehearsed. Lynsey Pow is a discovery. She's amazingly skilled in her ability to bring out multiple shades and Sarika as her sounding board, strains hard not to look bored. She's just about effective in her reactive role.
What's not: Other-worldly occurences in Nature aren't everyone's cup of tea. Though the narrative gets high on the mood mode, it also puts the non-believers off. You have to either be an occultist or at least, be mildly interested in the supernatural, to even get into the narrative scheme.
Also, the ambience is acutely uninviting. The pale twilight shades used for the nun's sequences, are reminiscent of The Omen, where disturbances in the Church were externalised through discomfiting visuals.
What to do: This is a film that appeals to those who like to question the spiritual doctrine. When we come out of it asking… 'Why are we here?', we don't quite mean it the way we do in the average movie. |
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