Census Bloodbath: Paint Me Like One Of Your Final Girls

A Note: This movie was only available to me in unsubtitled Tamil, so obviously my review is to be taken with a few huge grains of salt. However, I have made a point of focusing only on visual styling, music, and slasher structure rather than plot, characters, etc.

Year:
1986
Director:
M.R. Bhoopathy
Cast:
Mohan, Revathi, Nalini
Run Time:
2 hours 13 minutes

Plot (according to a translated synopsis that matches up with what I saw): When women around town begin mysteriously dying at the hands of a killer wielding a lethally sharp palette knife, Inspector Vinoth (Nizhalgal Ravi) takes on the case and targets local painter Chandru (Mohan) as the prime suspect. Chandru's new girlfriend Annam Poornima (Revathi) finds herself caught in the middle.

Analysis: As Census Bloodbath continues plowing through the slasher movies of the 1980s, we're kicking off 1986 proper in December, and I can hardly think of a better way to mark that occasion than by starting with a review of the Indian slasher December Pookkal (December Flowers).

And by that, I am referring entirely to the title featuring the word "December," because otherwise, I have generally found that the vibe of the Indian film industry's output in the 1980s allowed for very few genuinely thrilling horror movies. While Cheekh and Haveli had their moments, for every mildly sparkly diamond you unearth, you find multiple grimly mediocre efforts like Sansani. Or Sannata. Or Saboot. Or, god help you, Moodu Pani. Are you catching my drift?

December Pookkal certainly follows in the footsteps of those latter titles when it comes to its quality as a slasher. Even though it has a nice giallo-esque touch by featuring a black-gloved killer with a unique weapon, its kills are infrequent, bloodless, and so elliptically edited that, while you're aware that the killer has a consistent M.O. (putting the sharp palette knife in the general vicinity of a victim's neck before striking), you never understand even once what actually happens to the victims.

Simply put, it's a shit slasher. Thankfully, it's not a half-bad musical dramedy. The choreography is quite lovely, in fact. Particularly when it comes to the first big romantic number. That sequence, which places Mohan and Revathi in a forest of towering trees, mimics the push and pull of the early stages of a romance in a way that is completely charming, if not entirely inventive.

The movie's innate sense of rhythm isn't limited to its musical moments, either. Both the laughs and the thrills benefit from a strong sense of timing. The comedy is mostly driven by the performers and their rat-a-tat back-and-forth line deliveries, while the thrills are elevated by the rhythmic editing that punctuates moments like an early torture scene and a disorienting party where Poornima gets overwhelmed as the dancing and drinking around her spin wildly out of control.

This all makes for an exceedingly pleasant watch. But don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that December Pookkal is some kind of masterpiece. I appreciate the kinda twisted romantic denouement and the fact that characters keep randomly getting hit by cars, but the slasher scenes are never anything more than boring, for one thing. And there are too many characters populating the periphery of this story, forcing the movie to stop dead whenever it periodically drags them back in.

It's just not quite a good movie, even though it approaches being one in a variety of ways. Certainly not one that's good enough to be worth overlooking the language obstacle for non-Tamil speakers.

Killer: Chandru (Mohan)

Final Girl: Annam Poornima (Revathi)

Best Kill: I usually abhor gun deaths in slashers, but the other deaths are so bland and samey. So I'm picking Chandru's demise, where he is shot by the police and subsequently milks his death throes, thrashing and squirming for what feels like a full minute and a half.

Sign of the Times: Two characters listen to a radio report via the biggest boom box I've ever seen.

Scariest Moment: Chandru and Poornima stroll along the beach while giant waves are crashing to the shore, and I became increasingly worried that they might get swept out by the tide.

Weirdest Moment: A character wanders into some sort of art collective/den of sins, where a dude is covered in fake cobwebs and a little person is poking the ceiling with a giant stick. 

Champion Dialogue: N/A

Body Count: 5; I think? The kill scenes weren't super legible, and my lack of understanding of the dialogue may have led me to misread a discrete kill as a flashback explaining the preceding one. But I'm pretty sure my count is correct.

1. Well Woman is stabbed in the neck.
2. Woman is drowned offscreen.
3. Shower Woman is stabbed in the neck.
4. Blue Dress Woman is stabbed in the neck.
5. Chandru is shot.

TL;DR: December Pookkal is a reasonably charming Indian musical drama, but offers very little in the realm of slasher fun.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 839