Satan - The Dark Movie Review : Horror held together by loud noises

Satan - The Dark Movie Synopsis: A colonial-era curse resurfaces in a small town when a schoolboy's crush draws him into a family gripped by a dark, generational force.

Satan - The Dark Movie Review: A centuries-old curse haunting a village is a solid horror premise. Satan: The Dark has the setting, the lore, and the atmosphere to work with. What it doesn't have is the craft to make any of it actually scare you.

During the East India Company era, a ritualistic sorcery ceremony goes wrong in the hilly terrain of Hasthinapuram, unleashing a dark curse. In the present, Marcelin (Mona Bedre) begins behaving like a bloodthirsty fiend under a mysterious supernatural force, terrorizing her school-going daughter Alisha (Ayraa Palak) and others. As deaths pile up, locals start connecting them to Marcelin. Alisha's classmate Sagar (Fredrick John), who has a crush on her, undergoes a similar experience when he visits her house. The rest of the film follows his attempts to rescue Alisha from a curse that has persisted across generations.

The ingredients for a decent horror film are here. Bala G Ramasamy's camera makes the place look the part, and the location work is the film's strongest asset. But the school romance portions drag early on, and when the horror kicks in, it alternates between jump scares and graphic bloodshed, neither of which builds sustained dread. Aswin Krishna's score cranks the volume like a haunted house attraction. Prepare for a headache rather than fright.

The occult and Christian imagery peppered throughout could have added texture, but it sits there as set dressing. Fredrick John and Ayraa Palak deliver decent turns, selling the fear and panic their roles demand. Chandini Tamilarasan, as a woman who turns to Satan worship and cuts out her own tongue, is the one genuinely unsettling presence. Mona Bedre, Sreeja Ravi, and Edward are adequate.

At 144 minutes, the film overstays considerably. A tighter cut might have preserved whatever claustrophobic tension the setting generates. Instead, it stretches and defaults to the same gimmicky shocks until they stop registering.

Written By: Abhinav Subramanian