Help! I’m trapped in a Shakaal K-Hole!
It’s only early in the morning on the third day of October, and I’m already doing a horrible job of watching horror movies in anticipation of Halloween. I thought I’d get ahead of the curve with the Hindi A Nightmare on Elm Street ripoff Mahakaal . But boy, did I really do it to myself this time.
Is it insensitive to call this pure nonsense? Here lies the very definition of space-out cinema. I sat through 11 song and dance numbers, including one with a Michael Jackson lookalike and his equally bizarre twin brother, before imposter Freddy Krueger even knife-gloved his first victim.
I gotta admit, that inaugural death scene is pretty cool. A bunch of Freddy gloves punch through the floor to blenderize some ’90s era mall rat taking a nap. Hindi Freddy is pretty dope, what with his uncombed mullet and all. If I’m being honest, this is probably better than at least a third of the original Nightmare on Elm Street sequels.
The movie moves like ANOES for Dummies, stealing the original film’s best beats and watering them down to the most basic bone broth. It follows a group of middle-aged college students who just want to dance and sing and hook up with each other.
The local police officer’s daughter keeps dreaming about the boogey-woogie man, and after two death scenes and a whole lotta ’90s G-funk dance moves, it’s revealed that her father actually killed Freddy-wannabe Shakaal for kidnapping and sacrificing his youngest child.
I like that Mahakaal steals the musical cues directly from Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street soundtrack, originally composed by Charles Bernstein.
I was dreading the 2.5-hour runtime, imagining that I’d switch it off after about ten minutes. But this thing kept me paralyzed for the duration. I couldn’t even pull myself up to go reheat some pizza. It’s like sucking on a hard candy. The nightmare sequences are surrealism on a Dollar Tree budget, and Shakaal swings his iconic knife glove at victims like a blindfolded kid purposely trying to miss a piñata with his whiffle bat, overcompensating by a country mile.
The dude is pretty bad at slashing, if that’s supposed to be his career. Might be why he’s absent from Spirit Halloween’s hall of fame. But I can’t deny that this film has charm for days (I mean, it literally feels like it’s been on for days). The musical elements take a backseat to the murderous mayhem following the intermission. Which is too bad, ’cause I was hoping for Shakaal to get at least one dance number in.
I’m honestly shocked that I made it through the whole cursed thing. Do I recommend it for your Halloween party pleasures?
You know what?
Yeah, actually, if you’re looking for something to project on a wall or throw on in the background, this will pair pretty well with just about any type of Halloween music, and you don’t really need to hear the dialogue to get what is going on. There’s always one socially awkward droop in the crowd who gravitates toward keeping their eyes on the visuals. They’ll remember this and be bothered by it for days.
I don’t recommend doing what I did, which is just sitting in front of it with your full attention. It’s like raw dogging a five hour flight. There isn’t any real prize at the end except to say you endured all 138 minutes of it.
I’ll carry that as a badge of honor.
