Tumbbad

 And verily it happened that the firstborn of ye Mother of All Gods hath turned out to be a bit of a dick. Yea, Hastar is... iseth? a greedy little shit

 The other gods put up with it until little Hastar sets out to steal all the gold and all the food from her mother. Then they rebel, and put him down after he takes all the gold, but before he gets his mitts on the food. Mom takes pity on him and lets him live, but imprisons him deep in her womb (ouch!) and strikes his name from the cosmic record, so that he will never be worshipped.

 This is the mythology lesson told in the first couple of minutes of Tumbbad, a very cool Hindi folk-horror/dark fantasy/period drama/bit of weirdness. This prelude is presented with cheap-looking CGI -  classy on paper (it's all static idols and spilling coins) but very fake looking in practice, in a way that seems to bug us westerners (or at least me) but is very common in Asian cinema. In any case, I'm happy to report that's the only instance of tacky, overtly artificial CGI in the movie.

 From there we jump to the village of Tumbbad, early in the twentieth century, where a mother (Jyoti Malshe) and her two young children are stuck caring for a sleeping ancient woman chained to a bed, her mouth held shut with railroad spikes. The mother is the mistress of a rich man, the children are his bastards, and the chained up woman is his distant ancestor (great great grandmother, if I remember it right.) As it turns out, the old man lives in an old, cursed manor that used to be a forbidden temple to Hastar. He's spent all his life and fortune trying to get to the forgotten god's rumored treasure.

 Meanwhile, the sleeping old lady knows where the treasure is, but she's also a hideous cannibal demon. The eldest kid keeps pressuring his mother to try and get the treasure herself, to try and get the old woman to tell them where it is, or to go search the manor for it themselves. Things don't get that far; a horrifying accident leaves the kid alone in the shack, at night, with a hungry, now woken demon.

 The family, what's left of them, soon leaves Tumbbad, to look for a better life in the nearby city of Pune.

 Fifteen years later, the eldest son Vinayak (now played by Sohum Shah) returns to the old cottage where the crone was chained, only to find that a tree has grown out of her, with her still-beating heart attached. I love this sort of stuff. In exchange for finally putting her to rest and ending her eternal hunger, Vinayak finally learns where the treasure is and how to get at it, and returns to Pune with a pouch full of gold coins.

 This second chapter is all about Vinayak, his dealings with his wife (Anita Date-Kelkar) and his brother in law (Deepak Damle) - Vinayak needs to return every so often to Tumbbad and comes back with a handful of coins every time, so this naturally raises some questions, and some complications.
 When we finally learn how he gets the coins, it's a brilliant piece of mythic storytelling, a sort of procedural look into some business that feels like a legitimate folk tale, and that makes complete sense within the made-up cosmology set out in the prelude. This whole side of the movie is ridiculously well crafted, and worth the price of admission alone.

 The third act, set once again fifteen years later, catches up with a more successful Vinayak and his now grown son, who pretty much acts exactly as he did himself as a child. They come up with an ambitious plan to take advantage of the thing beneath the manor at Tumbbad... which, nah, can't see any problems with trying to trick an ancient evil god, I'm sure everything will turn out great.

 The mythology was created from scratch for the movie, but it sounds and feels authentic. It's interesting that Hastar is effectively unnamable, which has got to be a Lovecraft reference, right? The plot is is basically cautionary tale about greed (as an initial Gandhi quote should have made clear.) But... it's so much richer than that! Vinayak, to be clear, is a dipshit whose greed causes pain to those close to him, but he's never painted as a real monster, and has his good qualities. What I found really interesting is that he's more of a trickster figure than anything else, complete with things only going bad for him when he lets his lust for riches get the better of him. But it worked out great while he kept it reined in, so the story isn't that one-sided. He could have made it.

 The narrative of the movie as a whole is a little more problematic; It's episodic by design, but that gives the film some pacing issues. The first chapter is possibly the least interesting, but the most effective one as a fucked up mini-horror movie. The other two, while digging a bit more into outré imagery and cooler mythological aspects (more dark fantasy than horror proper) mix in maybe a little too much period drama and too many tangents. It's mostly compelling, but it makes the movie harder to recommend to people who'd prefer a more straightforward yarn. It also makes the film feel a little unwieldy, even despite its short running time. But... well, it's also what makes it special.

 I haven't even mentioned the Del Toro-influenced commenting on Indian history, or the thematic links between the different chapters - it's got some issues, but the script does a lot of heavy lifting.

 I should really mention the brilliant cinematography, which serves up striking imagery at a good clip, both natural and un-. Director Rahi Anil Barve and cinematographer Pankaj Kumar have made a damn beautiful-looking movie.

 The music, by videogame stalwart Jesper Kydd is also really, really good. There's also a recurring Indian song included, which... well, let's just say it's not my style, but it very endearingly comments on the action, like the rap at the end of a Ninja Turtles movie. Or Psycho Goreman.

 I like a lot of Asian cinema, but have bounced off the hardest off Indian stuff. There's a little of the sort of Bollywood stuff I dislike on display here - the song, a ridiculously overblown dramatic moment, but it's pretty negligible, and the movie completely earns those moments anyhow. It's a good one - great even, for mythology nerds.