I do enjoy horror comedies occasionally. But these days, the sub-genre is so overdone that it spawned several mediocre knockoffs. Vaibhav-starrer Kaatteri(2022), to my surprise, has an interesting premise but suffers from the inability of the director/writer to write anything coherently. It has gore, violence, dark comedy, adult comedy everything that you can expect in this sub-genre. The dialogues are badly written, that is, to put it mildly. Often, the characters repeat the same things twice seemingly forgetting they already had said that. I must applaud the visual effects, the makeup, and the set. The base plot of a mysterious ghost village with hidden secrets is not new to world cinema but it is rarely used in Tamil cinema. Only if they had put a little bit more effort into coming up with a better story to supplement the plot. It looked like they made the story on the go without thinking about whether it would make sense in the end. The actors did a fine job with what they had been given. Some of the scenes were enjoyable if you just simply ignore the lack of any coherent storyline.
The movie had potential and is simply wasted by the poor writing. Watchable for the jump scares, the period set, and the horror effects. Perhaps, the movie would have worked as a proper horror movie without the comedy element.
Rating: 4/10.
