What Is the Story About?
Prime Video India’s new Tamil web series ‘The Village’ is set in the hinterlands of Tamil Nadu, in a tiny village called Kattiyal. Dr. Gautham Subramanian (Arya) sets out on a road trip, along with his wife Neha (Divya Pillai) and daughter Maya. When their car breaks down in the back of beyond, eerie things start happening around them in the supposedly haunted village.
The Village is written by Milind Rau, V Deeraj Vaidy and Deepthi Govindarajan, directed by Rau, and is adapted from the graphic novel of the same name, created by Asvin Srivatsangam, Shamik Dasgupta and Vivek Rangachari.
Performances?
The Village is that rare Indian series where every performance stands out — for being utterly, completely, unabashedly terrible. Yes, not even one actor delivers a performance worth mentioning in Prime Video’s The Village. Arya looks as if he’s stumbled on to the sets of The Village by mistake, and thus has no clue what he has to do on screen. Arjun Chidambaram as opportunistic businessman Prakash hams his way through his scenes. Thalaivaasal Vijay as his manager Jagan is equally caricaturish.
The supporting cast of the series is somewhat better, but only just. Aadukalam Naren as Shakthivel, Muthukumar K as Karunagam, and George Maryan as Peter are passable. The less said about the female artists, the better. John Kokken as Farhan is about the only actor in the series who is convincing enough to be watchable.
Analysis
The Village is a blatant waste of resources – time, effort, money and celluloid. It is so bad that one wonders how it passed muster at Prime Video, and the keen eyes of its head of original shows, Aparna Purohit. Nothing about the horror show hits the mark – not the plot or premise; not the cast or performances; not the production values and technical aspects; and certainly not the storytelling.
The narrative is a mish-mash of concepts and ideas. It careens wildly between ecological horror to a discourse on corporate greed to a Tumbbad-style tale rooted in mythology. Come to think of it, The Village seems to be heavily inspired by Tumbbad. It has similarly-styled grotesque creatures and a goddess that must be kept appeased. Heck, The Village even has an angry-red living, pulsing, throbbing tree trunk, a la Tumbbad.
The plot of the series is old and outdated, with a gazillion shows and movies done and dusted on similar lines. Its making is even more archaic. The CGI and VFX is so bad that even amateurs can do a better job of it. The VFX work in The Village looks cartoonish and unnatural – two things it simply shouldn’t, especially in a series of this scale.
The jump scares never land – not even once in the entire series are we shocked or scared out of our wits. The editing is choppy, while the action scenes are more funny than scary or thrilling. Nothing in the series is remotely horrifying – neither the gruesome killings nor the atmospherics and the world-building.
The plot devices and subplots in the series are laughably silly, while the characters that populate the show are so irritating that you don’t care a hoot for them. The leading man does nothing except for letting out pained screams intermittently. A crack commando team with sophisticated weaponry easily falls prey to the creatures.
A drug-addled businessman with more money than brains thinks nothing of pursuing the same problematic line of treatment for his handicap, even though his entire team, save one, has been massacred at the hands of the grotesque creatures.
Not just this, the entire narrative of The Village is tedious, boring, not to say, confusing. The story incorporates myriad unrelated issues — rich exploiting the poor, the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, corporate misdemeanours, sci-fi horror and more, all the while flitting between timelines – from 2004 to present day to 1994 to present day to 1989 to present day to 1996 to…..phew!
To sum it up, The Village is a series that takes bits and pieces of its story from various movies – zombie flicks like Army Of The Dead, mythological horror like Tumbbad, superhero flicks like Spiderman 2, slasher horror movies like The Hills Have Eyes, and more. The only difference is that it is more nonsensical than the most nonsensical horror content put together.
Music and Other Departments?
Girish Gopalakrishnan’s background music for the series is passable – nothing too great, but not too bad either. Sivakumar Vijayan’s cinematography is good. Lawrence Kishore’s editing is below average.
Highlights?
None
Drawbacks?
Tedious plot
Extremely poor VFX and CGI
Terrible performances
Mediocre storytelling
Did I Enjoy It?
No
Will You Recommend It?
No
The Village Series Review by Binged Bureau