“Do not show the ghost,” say some of the best horror film makers about the secret to building fear and dread. The same principle should apply to other genres. Comedy works best when it makes the audience laugh with mundane events, but it loses its charm when the characters also laugh with it. Thrillers, too, have secret ingredients that make them work. The masters of the genre abstain from an excessive amount of violence. Instead, they rely on minimal onscreen gore, leaving the terror to the audience's imagination. They achieve this balance mainly through foreshadowing. Not many thrillers in Tamil cinema use it as well as Bharathiraja's Sigappu Rojakkal does. The film is radical for positioning a deeply misogynistic, antagonistic character as its central character. 

This late 1970s psychological thriller, starring Kamal Hassan and Sridevi, is a masterclass in building tension and intrigue with visual and verbal details that foreshadow the grim trajectory of the narrative. The very first scene, where a janitor kills and buries a rat, itself tells us a lot about the characters and the story. Soon after killing the animal, the subservient man goes to an outhouse with a cup of tea. The rat represents the disposable manner in which the janitor’s master Dileep/Muthu (Kamal Hassan) deals with his victims. Burying it in the yard plants the seed of horror in the audience's mind. Sigappu Rojakkal uses many other elements to increase the anxiety in the viewer and the characters. The visual of a black cat licking human blood foreshadows the horror that is about to unfold. When Sridevi’s character later hallucinates a hand emerging from that exact soil, the film beautifully connects her psychological trapping with the reality of the mansion's history. Bharathiraja underscores the hallucinatory aspect of the moment with a peculiar visual effect. The rat and the cat act as the Hitchcockian bomb under the table. Showing the bomb going off suddenly creates shock for a few seconds. Whereas, if you show the bomb under the table first and the characters just sit there talking, the audience experiences minutes of agonising suspense. They know something is profoundly rotten in this mansion, making every normal interaction between Kamal and Sridevi's characters feel terrifyingly high-stakes.

The brilliance of the film lies in delaying its big revelation about Dileep's dark past and true nature. It does not immediately tell us that the man is a psychopathic killer who victimises helpless women. Instead, it allows the audience to piece this together. The film largely eschews violence, while still telling a story rife with simmering tension between the characters. The film only shows Kamal raping a female character once. It lets us know everything else about him through suggestive details, some of which serve as a chilling build-up to Dileep's backstory. Using footage of Kamal's character imagining female clothing and body parts each time he meets a woman, the film tells us that he has a dangerous fixation on the female form. Bharathiraja's film trusts the audience’s ability to infer this from the visual and makes full use of “the fear of the unknown” factor. The quick cuts to female clothing and random body parts act as a visual manifestation of Dileep's fractured, compartmentalised mind. We do not need to see him kill every time; the brief, intrusive cuts tell us everything we need to know about his deteriorating psyche. The moments marinate in our head, making us prepare for the sense of dread and impending doom that eventually saturates the film.

Further, limiting the depiction of violence ensures that when it does happen, it has maximum psychological impact. Ilaiyaraaja’s background score complements the visual narrative, helping to sustain tension when nothing explicitly violent happens onscreen.

At a time when films tend to rely on excessive gore and gratuitous violence, while failing to underscore the evilness of the protagonist, Bharathiraja's Sigappu Rojakkal feels way ahead of its times. While the film has some elements that feel a tad dated now, it largely succeeds as a deep dive into a demented mind. For a modern audience, it is Kalamkaval on steroids. 

It is a solid example of how a film with subtext and suggestive storytelling creates a far more immersive, lingering sense of unease than a story with mounting body count. Sometimes, less is more, and Sigappu Rojakkal staunchly adheres to this principle. 

The film is available on YouTube. It is essential viewing for every film buff.