Why Thallumaala May Inspire a New Generation of ‘Horror Films’

Enthaalle. My clickbait game is getting stronger by the day.

Wait, don’t leave! I wasn’t looking. Give me 5 minutes and I’ll tell you why I think Thalumaala qualifies as a “horror” film – and a prolific one at that.

What exactly is horror? How is this species defined?

StudioBinder defines terror as a “Genre of storytelling meant to frighten, shock and thrill its audience.” When we talk about horror movies, however, there are other (more specific) characteristics that come to mind: a usually dark theme, a ghost and a backstory, possibly a few jumpscares, and maybe even some underlining subject matter or social commentary. surface level (like how Jordan Peele addressed racism Get out).

But are these factors necessary to qualify a film as a “horror film”? Does ‘shock and awe’ have a wider meaning in cinema?

In an episode of Visible and Invisible, noted film critic Jai Arjun Singh rejects the conventional measure of horror film analysis. He goes on to talk about how horror itself is a subject in the middle of the cinema. If we look at the history of cinema, the first film of the Lumiere brothers (the one about a moving train) caused a wave of terror among its audience, who ran out of the theaters to “save themselves”. There are more such cases from the era. Bob Seidensticker writes at FutureHype: “[When] The first films were shown publicly, one showing a scene on the shore — no monsters, no invading army, just waves rolling along a beach. The crowd was horrified. They ran from the makeshift cinema to escape the rushing waters.”

Over time, the public became familiar with moving images and felt comfortable enough to sit on their asses and watch and appreciate the art. But not for long, because… soon, some clever editor invented “cuts”. Now, one set of animations immediately seamlessly succeeded another unrelated set. The world was once again horrified by this new advance. A few years later, silent films were transformed into talkies. What? Could these lifeless screens produce sound now? A few years later, color films were born. And so on and so on..

Each of these cases were groundbreaking developments that shook our nervous system. In Singh’s words, horror is ingrained in the DNA of cinema. Every time a decision (creative or technological) is made that deviates from the status quo, it causes a shock that appeals to our fears of technology. The magnitude of the shock will, of course, depend on the degree of deviation. All in all, shock could be said to be an undeniable physical reaction to crazy creativity. And so, any act of creativity could be characterized as having an element of horror.

Where we are today, it seems that the cinematic form has finally become saturated. But that’s when the occasional pleasure of a movie comes along, kicking you in the gut and forcing you to throw that thought away and surrender to the change in shock. In a Kerala context, one of the best examples of this type of film is Thalumaala.

While it was essentially a masala film centered around a gang of boys in Ponnani, its editing and cinematography Thalumaala he took it to wild heights never seen before. The race sequences are shot with an almost 360-degree panoramic view of the developments. The camera sometimes pans at the same level as the characters, taking us on the proverbial roller coaster ride. the cuts are remarkably seamless and yet weave highly unrelated scenes together (the film is mostly non-linear). Love it or hate it, it’s hard to ignore Thallumaala’s vibrant energy, which almost resembles an Instagram reel. (Speaking of which, even the Instagram feed is a “terrible revolution” that has, over time, impacted our attention spans with content that adds value over time.)

You would notice this Thalumaala it was a film that had certain sections of the audience abandoning it altogether despite its massive success at the box office. This is where I think people’s reaction to a shock differs. Some people – and I’m tempted to believe this is an age thing, so let’s say the elderly – are more resistant to change, and so when they see something so strange, they tend to call it blasphemous. Others (the young?), however, may celebrate the change. they can feel the shock dissolve and transform into excitement, so a movie like Thalumaala becomes something that they near you in all glory.

While any art can technically deliver the aforementioned shock, I think editing can have the biggest impact given how it alone decides the flow of the narrative. Plus, since most filmmakers are out there to have fun, editing becomes a handy stick that can be used to spring surprises on the audience. And given people’s limited attention spans these days, it’s almost a must to think of new ways to tell stories. I think “fresh content, tight packaging and fresh presentation” is the new rule of entertainment, and two of these three factors can be optimized in the editing board.

If you look at the recent films that have been called “experimental and fun”, they have mostly dealt with editing. right from today’s Tamil pesanga favourite Love today to the Academy’s favorite Everything Everywhere Simultaneously. Malayalam cinema has traditionally never shied away from experimentation, so I hope so Thalumaala he might just have revolutionized editing. We already have a bunch of promising filmmakers like Krishand (who did Purusha Pretham and Abasaviuham) and Abhinav Sunder Nayak (Mukundan Unni Associates), who are bold enough to break the rules. So as viewers, I think it’s fair to be optimistic about this trend and hope that we’ll continue to be terrified at regular intervals, time and time again!