'Prakambanam' Movie Review: Original Ideas, Wild Laughs, And A Ghost Like You’ve Never Seen 

From a safe distance, one can argue that both Sarvam Maya and Prakambanam are based on the same idea. Both are about bachelors, whose life is turned upside down when a ghost enters their lives. Ghosts in both films have unfinished business with their partners, which is why they’re still hanging around. They are both horror comedies, too, in which a set of serious topics gets discussed with the lightest of hands. However, Sarvam Maya and Prakambanam are diametrically opposite examples of how to treat similar ideas as though they have nothing in common. 

If Sarvam Maya was a gentle breeze, propping up its ghost to behave like an angel, the ghost in Prakambanam is a bloodthirsty matriarch out to seek revenge, that too against her own family. And if Sarvam Maya was all about its softboy aesthetics and syrupy niceness, Prakambanam gives you the sickly indoors of a boys’ hostel, its spit-stained walls and its slimy corridors. Its ability to crack a disgusting joke with a straight face is what makes Prakambanam a really wild swing. Not only does the setting allow the film to go to any distance for a laugh, but it’s able to embrace its absurdities as though it takes pride in them. 

How else can one talk about the process through which the spirit enters its world? It doesn’t need an Ouija board as it did in Romancham (2023) or Adi Kapyare Koottamani (2015), both films that it could easily have been compared to. It doesn’t require a major ritual either to bring back the undead. Instead, it relies on an idea that combines tobacco snuff with the mortal remains of an old lady to give you the wildest laugh of this year. After the film establishes this plot point, the jokes simply write themselves.

And yet it remains absurdly unpredictable because no one can think like the film’s writer (Sreehari Vadakkan). He has a twisted brain for sure, the sort that’s able to think of a joke which involves a corpse that becomes a topic of contention between a group of communists and the extreme right wing. Topics like moral policing, religious hypocrisy and adultery also get addressed, but in a way that you’re always laughing along without pausing to make you think. And when these ideas are combined with the wildest of casts, including Sagar Surya in a performance of a lifetime, Prakambanam can really turn into a hilarious surprise made by a group of people for whom comedy comes very naturally. 

The only issue in the film is when it begins to believe that it needs to do a lot more to remain funny. From a natural comedy set around supernatural situations, the film then begins to go overboard with its absurdity. It gives us a haunted mansion, a Russian lover and a Rajesh Madhavan speaking Russian. The sets too begin to work very hard, taking a group of everyday people into a fantastic world, the film’s naturalism is incapable of balancing. Instead of laughing out loud during this switch, we feel like the film is running out of ideas to keep us laughing. Performances begin to feel affected too after this point, and the easy bursts of tension are then replaced with laborious plot points and slapstick humour. 

But what keeps you holding on are the three boys, led by Ganapathi. They’ve truly bought into the film’s wackiness and keep you hooked, even when you’ve stopped believing. From the wildness of the situations, we focus instead on the wildness of their conviction, and we sit around patiently as the film comes back to a satisfying ending. You may feel disappointed with the way the second half does little with the film’s incredible setup, but it’s got a set of jokes that are so ridiculously funny that you can't wait to watch parts of the film again with a bunch of friends who have no idea what’s coming.