Karungaapiyam Movie Review: A banal horror of garbled stories and underwhelming execution

Filmmaker Deekay's latest outing Karungaapiyam is yet another addition to his horror film bank, consisting of hits and misses like Yaamiruka Bayamey and Kaatteri. Karungaapiyam, without much hemming and hawing, quickly glides into the main plot. Perhaps, it is the first and only good thing about this horrifying compilation of shoddy tales. 

Director: Deekay

Cast: Kajal Aggarwal, Raiza Wilson, Regina Cassandra, Janani, John Vijay and Kalaiyarasan

Set during the lockdown, Karungaapiyam begins with Regina's Umayal Karthika deciding to spend time at a 100-year-old unkempt library in a bid to divert and heal from a heartbreak. And of course, from the sea of books, she picks up Karungaapiyam (a black novel). The plot unfolds with her reading different chapters, and her imagination about the stories comes to life on screen for us as the rest of the film. 

So let me try and give a peek at what all five stories are about...let me try. The first story is about Raiza's Meera, who finds abode at a neighbour's (Kalaiyarasan) house when her landlord chases her away. During her stay, she learns he's involved in nefarious activities. While he keeps her captive and physically abuses her, he realises that she is a ghost already... and that's it. I mean... that's it. 

The second story is about Janani's Kajal, a viral social media influencer, who abducts strangers only to cut their fingers for cooking Viral Biryani.  At one point, Kajal keeps one of the captive's fingers on the board and begins to chop, chop and chop...and I was relieved that the rest of the segment was suddenly chopped. 

The third one features VJ Paru as a singer and Lollu Sabha Manohar as a composer. They encounter dead spirits at the studio. They try hard to make us laugh. I repeat they try really really hard. But all they encounter is dead silence at their jokes. 

And then, in the next episode, an alien and crew land on Earth. And what do they do first? They go to a bar. Then... they teach two men who venture into the bar the significance of humanity and selflessness. Why have aliens when the two men after their regular dose of alcohol would have waxed eloquently on the same topic? 

One may think Kajal's segment could be the decent one kept for the last. So did I. But guess what? It was hardly better than the rest but only unreasonably disturbing. It is about a widow from an affluent family, considered a prognosticator. While she is framed to be possessed by an evil and sinful spirit, the villagers, who once hailed her, eventually abuse her to death

All the episodes have some horror elements of sorts but they are hardly inventive. Yet they are imbecilic as the filmmaker heedlessly opts for cheap thrills like painting ghost faces with black and red, tricking with torchlight, and totally surrendering to the momentum-building score to do the job. The film is even more mired by incoherent and lethargic writing, which doesn't really connect the dots as smartly as the makers think they do. Even the multistarrer cast with their slew of prosaic performances just cannot salvage this wearying progression of events. And the beauty is that all of these deficiencies are the only consistencies in the film. Let's not even get to dissecting the wispy "philosophical" arguments that the film intended to convey.

While there are hardly any significant or indelible scenes in Karungaapiyam, I'd like to mention one of the crucial and disturbing scenes. Remember Kajal's episode that I mentioned earlier? Closer to the end, amidst an arid rural backdrop, Kajal's Karthika is tied up to a tree. The villagers pelt stones at her, leading to bloodied scars all over. And it's the similar scarring effect I endured throughout the film, and it stayed long after the curtains were brought down.