Pett kata shaw

A hobbling djinn with a sweet tooth and centuries’ worth of memory, a piscivorous demon who likes her fish properly cooked, a lost village that claims to be the cradle of all tales, a ghost who lures the bereaved into the night by imitating a dear departed – all haunt the world of Pett kata shaw, Nuhash Humayun’s eerily funny anthology of horror stories, made initially as a four-episode web series.

Inspired by Bengali superstitions, legends and folk tales familiar throughout South Asia, Pett kata shaw gives new form to old yarns, infusing them with real-world relevance in its references to issues of communal harmony, mental health and gender identity. With a light touch, Humayun’s film presents these popular fables variously as repositories of human cruelty and prejudice, cautionary tales circulated to preserve social order, but also plaintive accounts of grief and loss.

In its stately widescreen compositions, expressive colours, cosily limited settings, and slowly gliding camera that pushes terror to the corner of the eye, Pett kata shaw is an exemplar of classical horror filmmaking that avoids gore, jump scares and excessive use of darkness and CGI. With each section framed as an oral retelling, Humayun’s film revives the thrill of exchanging macabre ghost stories around a campfire.

– Srikanth Srinivasan