Ekaki comes with good and bad. It doesn’t replicate the idea of ‘bhoot bungalow,’ that we have witnessed in cinema and TV serials for aeons—ideally, what resembles it? Casting palls, uncanny sounds, with anaemic undertones to emancipate its mood of horror, and a car in the middle of the road, that has a man and sometimes with a partner, driven on a solitary journey, ends up in an untraveled territory, carpeted in autumn leaves, and the car stops at this colossal weathered iron gate, at a distance stands a dilapidated bungalow…ideally that is what imageries have been like right? But Ekaki is different: while it still awakens the soul of a similar isolated bungalow, it never succumbs to dilapidation; it is well furnished, but on the outskirts, with a strange arrival via the sky.
Someone who has watched Ashish Chanchlani and his vines knows that his comedy sketches are slapstick and deeply rooted in Indian culture and everyday life. Exaggeration is a characteristic he brings to his scripts and sketches, and it is what you find in the two chapters released of Ekaki—it also lands with instant relatability—take the Ekaki villa: he says it belonged to his uncle and was recently revealed in the ‘will.’ In the Indian context, if you follow the news, you know ‘property’ is one of the nation’s greatest ego-boosts—so he refers to the villa as a ‘hidden gem.’ We get a nostalgia overdose from witnessing the STD booth standing vacant on the road—the setting has the chill.
But somewhere, while the intent was to make it a ‘horror-comedy,’ it turned out to be a spoof; the horror went missing. Somewhere, it became way too crass with unnecessary sexual innuendos and other references that just nullified the very horror element of it, so far. What remains commendable is that he has stepped out of his ‘vines’ territory, which remains his comfort zone, and now he moves to filmmaking—he holds the pen of three here: writer, director and the lead actor.
Ekaki, in terms of horror, however, still remains inelegant. But at the end of chapter 2, with the spaceship landing, it sparked my curiosity. And that curiosity might not let you stay alone.
