Ludo

Me and Indian cinema have not had the best history together, though I've watched many I could only name a few and generally even those I didn't really like. I think the best I ever watched was Vicky Donor (2012) and even that was a remake of a French Canadian film.

However I put my fears aside and gave this a chance because I liked the sound of the concept. Based on the description it sounded like it would fall into a sub-genre that I love, that it would be something in the vein of SAW (2004). Rest assured it's not that kind of movie at all.

It tells the story of two young couples who after a night on the town are looking for a hotel room to have some private fun in. Struggling to find one they instead break into a mall only to fall foul of a mysterious old couple.

It's a hard movie to categorize, it's rather an odd creature but what I can say with confidence is that it's awful. No really, this is even a low 2/10.

Though it starts interestingly enough it quickly descends into confusion as soon as the plot reveals itself. It's just not engaging, the story makes very little sense, far too much of it is presented in the form of flashbacks and narration and ultimately it goes nowhere.

Once again Indian cinema proves that it just isn't for me and conned me into watching another dire effort with promises of something it didn't deliver.

The Good:

Starts off interestingly enough

The Bad:

Stock screams

Plot is awful

Ridiculous random imagery

I am a huge fan of Q. Huge is an understatement but Ludo did not meet even 20% of my expectation. When I found Ludo was on Netflix I was elated and I spent my Thanksgiving afternoon glued to the screen. I have never felt so disappointed. Rii is as usual amazing but whoever did her voice for the movie ( I assume it was meant to be a Sakchunni - Bengali married woman's spirit) sounded ridiculous, raspy and horrendous. The four main characters are shallow and by shallow I mean not an ounce of depth. I grew up in Kolkata and I can vouch for the fact that we don't use so much of swear words in our daily vocabulary. I Know impressionable men and women feel that using swear words would be cool but it was a bit of an overkill.

Tilottama Shome as the Shaman could have been explored much much more. I was left with a palate of bile after the movie. It could have been so so much better had some of the background story been omitted and stress put on the present day scenario of the Shaman's existence. Over all, I think it is a mess.

Two teenage girls, Ria (Subholina Sen) and Payel (Ananya Biswas), meet up with Pele (Soumendra Bhattacharya) and his brother Babai (Ranodeep Bose) for a night on the town, after which they plan to find a hotel for some casual sex. This being India, however, where sex before marriage is a big no-no, they are unable to find anyone willing to rent them a room, so the horny foursome hide in a shopping mall until after hours instead. Once the lights all go off, the teens find themselves face to face with a weird elderly couple who entice them into playing an ancient, evil version of the popular board game Ludo that feeds on blood.

Not being well versed in Indian horror flicks, I am unsure as to whether a shopping mall is a popular setting for such movies, but it's the second in a row for me, my previous Indian horror experience being the absolutely lousy Darr @ The Mall (2015). Ludo isn't any better. Darr's highlight was an energetic song and dance routine (which says a lot about the rest of the film); Ludo's strongest point is its occasionally rather nasty gore, which includes eyeball gouging, gut ripping and tongue tearing. But both films suffer from a plot that makes very little sense.

Ludo's 'Hellraiser meets Jumanji' evil board game is a neat idea that offers plenty of scope for scary moments, but co-directors Qaushiq Mukherjee and Nikon fail to make the most of their concept, instead offering up lots of random creepy imagery without much of a coherent story-line; when the narrative is so confusing, it's hard to engage the viewer, and even harder to scare them silly. Worse yet, the second half of the film changes tack completely, forgetting about the teenagers to focus on the backstory of the game and its original victims, resulting in a horribly disjointed mess of a film that makes for a very frustrating experience.

This started off so well with an interesting premise. This film was confused and lost it's way. Some good FX and a reasonable cast was let down by a poor story.

I mean WTF!!!??? I thought That I had bad movies but This is the worst!!!