Tumbbad

Tumbbad opens with Mahatma Gandhi's famous saying, ''There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed". Based on the story by Narayan Dharap, this supernatural thriller takes the audience on an exhilarating ride with a fascinating tale of grim morality. Director Rahi Anil Barve has crafted a film reminiscent of the traditional stories which are beguiling yet simultaneously frightening.

The Venice Critics' Week was inaugurated with Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad's non-Competition entry, Tumbbad - that's the name of the very rainy village in which the story unfolds. Technically, though, the section was inaugurated with Toni D'Angelo's 20-minute Italian short, Nobody's Innocent, which played before Tumbbad, like the first part of a double bill.

Rahi Anil Barve's Tumbbad isn't as much a horror film as it is a fairy tale for grown ups. An old woman is lulled into sleep by a threat classically reserved for children: 'Sleep oh old lady, or the devil will be here!' There are underlayers of starving monsters and webby secret chambers, but no Alices or compassionate barn spiders.

When I was a child I used to imagine that there is a ghost in every commode, monsters under the bed, and that if you looked hard enough into the inky black night, especially up in the mountains, you would see the spectre of a white man from the colonial era about whom I had heard from an older relative (although she said the spirit descends from a ceiling calling out the words "Van Ross I'm coming").

Like classic horror films, Rahi Anil Barve's Tumbbad has demons - the ones who haunt and thrill, and have to be destroyed. There's a chained ancient ghoul and a half man-half beast child of a deity seething in his mother's womb. The film sets up its premise with a dense story about this mythical child Hastar, and why he is wrongly tamed.

A young boy is tasked with feeding a chained creature who is permanently locked up in a dilapidated ruin. This sub-human entity is an elderly woman who is only introduced through her moans and grunts and a flashing glimpse of her reptilian nails being clipped.

A young boy Vinayak Rao is affected by a personal tragedy. His encounter with a wretched old lady who knows of a buried treasure sets him on the path to greed. He grows up to explore the local legend of a monster named Hastar and his gold medallions.

A man with a chiselled body, tense face and dreamy eyes is looking out of a bus window. He is worried but looks aggressive, as if ready to counter whatever may come. On reaching his stop, he heads straight to a fort that's been battling bad weather and incessant rain for centuries. In trying to open the old fort's massive gate, his arched body resembles a bowstring ready to be released.

An ancient myth. A hideous demon. Hidden treasure. Human greed. This potent mix is stirred and ground in Tumbbad, and the result is a highly unusual, visually stunning, richly atmospheric concoction of genres and themes: horror, fantasy, social, period. I also found echoes of folk-tales, not your cosy happy-ever after kinds, but the ones that leave you distinctly uneasy.