Kakuda Review - All Ghost Science, No Art

Kakuda Review Movie Talkies

Kakuda Review: Right after Munjya's commercial success, director Aditya Sarpotdar's another horror comedy, Kakuda, starring Riteish Deshmukh, Sonakshi Sinha, and Saqib Saleem, finds a release, but on OTT. The idea was to make a rooted horror flick with the addition of a Ghostbuster, oops, sorry, ghost hunter, which can show some modern ways of dealing with ghosts to those blind villagers. All that ghost science is used well and does work occasionally, but the art of cinema is missing. The film looks so bad and childish sometimes that you just want to quit watching it or fast-forward it to the end.The film tells the story of a ghost called Kakuda, who arrives every Tuesday at 7.15 p.m. and knocks on the doors. Whoever opens it wrong gets a hunch on his back and dies on the 13th day after that night. Sunny (Saqib Saleem) and Indira (Sonakshi Sinha) get married on Tuesday, and Sunny reaches home around 7.15 p.m., only to be attacked by Kakuda. Hunchback Sunny and his family have lost all hope, but Indira is not ready to believe in all these superstitions. She gets help from a ghost hunter named Victor (Riteish Deshmukh), who is looking for an interesting male ghost to hunt. Together, they all try to find out secrets from Kakuda's past and why he is doing all this, but they only have 13 days.Kakuda was an interesting idea, and the story is rooted in all the ghost tales that many rural parts still believe in. The problem is the screenplay, which doesn't hold the script. It's scattered, uninteresting, and very childish. Some jokes are not even for kids, while others look too kiddish. We have a nice confusion of two love stories since we have a double role, but it ends on an unsatisfactory note. Victor's emerging love story was making sense, but why didn't it have a proper ending? I don't know that. The same goes for Sunny and Indira's misunderstood and misplaced angle, from Indira's parents point of view, I mean, but even that doesn't lead to a proper conclusion. Indira and Sunny's romance is too cheesy and childish, to be honest. They are in love in one moment, angry at another, and then suddenly back together. No stability. No art. No sense.This isn't a performance-driven film since all the characters are made spoofy. Riteish Deshmukh will remind you of those two crap characters we saw in Bhoot Police. That fear and seriousness towards the powerful ghost are missing. Sonakshi Sinha and Sonakshi Sinha don't even try since the role is too corny. Sunny, played by Saqib, is definitely not my definition of a man—I mean, a man of that age. Aasif Khan has a few funny moments, while the supporting cast of Sachin Vidrohi, Arun Dubey, Suraj Raj Madhwani, Hemant Singh, Ravi Ranjan, and others pass the time without much effort.Kakuda doesn't have hit music, nor does it have a chilling background score. The cinematography was average, and the production design was just okay. No wonder they dumped the film on OTT all of a sudden. They just wanted to get rid of it somehow. It's close to two hours and doesn't really bore you, so editing is not much at fault here. However, the songs and the first half could have been faster. Aditya Sarpotdar recently made Munjya, which I personally didn't like but that has been well received by the audiences. So, first, big congratulations to him for that. Secondly, Kakuda is as bad as Munjya but will not have box office numbers. Nobody really cares about the film success that has been released on OTT, so Kakuda is safe. But is it safe to watch? I doubt. It may entertain kids and teenagers, but definitely not mature audiences.