Movie Review: Ghoul (Netflix Original) (Hindi)
Set in a near dystopian future where the government (or military) is all-knowing and all-powerful, controlling every aspect of its citizens' lives, and branding those who dare question the "establishment" as anti-national and forcing them to undergo a reconditioning process so as to fall back in line, Patrick Graham's Ghoul doesn't waste time getting down to the brass tacks.
The atmosphere is shrouded in darkness (at times literally so), unsettling, and for lack of a better word, ghoulish. And the narrative that a Muslim officer has to constantly prove where her loyalties lie (to the country of course) is doubtless interesting, as are the complications that ensue when she is posted as an enhanced interrogation officer at a detention centre that houses Muslim prisoners who are deemed anti-nationalists and the very idea of a ghoul that preys on people's guilt (a trope that recalls to mind the 2016 Canadian horror film The Void).
But for all the effective Orwellian world-building and themes of authoritarianism, political tyranny and unnerving paranoia it gets right, the horror thriller-cum-social critique squanders its profound, imaginative setup to devolve into a predictable paint-by-numbers slasher that eschews cerebral, psychological scares for the conventional. Ghoul, ultimately, may be an unsatisfying genre mash-up, but is an assuredly sobering reminder that innocent lives continue to be lost in the name of religion, politics, intolerance and nationalist fervour.
The atmosphere is shrouded in darkness (at times literally so), unsettling, and for lack of a better word, ghoulish. And the narrative that a Muslim officer has to constantly prove where her loyalties lie (to the country of course) is doubtless interesting, as are the complications that ensue when she is posted as an enhanced interrogation officer at a detention centre that houses Muslim prisoners who are deemed anti-nationalists and the very idea of a ghoul that preys on people's guilt (a trope that recalls to mind the 2016 Canadian horror film The Void).
But for all the effective Orwellian world-building and themes of authoritarianism, political tyranny and unnerving paranoia it gets right, the horror thriller-cum-social critique squanders its profound, imaginative setup to devolve into a predictable paint-by-numbers slasher that eschews cerebral, psychological scares for the conventional. Ghoul, ultimately, may be an unsatisfying genre mash-up, but is an assuredly sobering reminder that innocent lives continue to be lost in the name of religion, politics, intolerance and nationalist fervour.
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