A nonetheless from The Kerala Story. (courtesy: YouTube)

Cast: Adah Sharma, Pranav Mishra, Yogita Bihani, Saniya Mir, Eleena Koul, Siddhi Idnani, Sonia Balani

Director: Sudipto Sen

Rating: Half a star (out of 5)

God’s Own Country is about to be decimated, bacha lijiye, the battered and bruised protagonist of The Kerala Story implores. But saving Kerala is actually not the aim of this shoddy movie aimed toward telling the world that the state is sitting on a ticking time bomb. Islamist terrorists scout for feminine suicide bombers within the state, the movie asserts with no modicum of moderation and proceeds to demonise a individuals.

Professedly primarily based on “many true stories”, The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, is not actually within the reality as an entire. Taking the instances of a handful of lacking ladies, it spins a yarn that will have us consider that Kerala has contributed 1000’s of foot troopers to ISIS over time. Needless to say, that declare is not backed up with both proof or real concern.

No greater than a prolonged WhatsApp ahead within the guise of a film, The Kerala Story would have been deemed a satisfactory car for a half-baked conspiracy concept had the movie not been as laughably inept, each when it comes to its making and its tonalities. It can not by any stretch of the creativeness be accused of being a balanced investigation.

It is simple to see that the screenplay written by Suryapal Singh, producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah (who can also be credited as inventive director) and Sudipto Sen is the handiwork of gents who don’t a lot as have a working data of the state and the people who it’s about.

Never does the movie that claims to inform the story of Kerala seem like it has been shot in that a part of the world. Nor do the actors – their accents are as horrid because the movie – look remotely like individuals who have been born and raised in Kerala.

A stray shot late within the movie is sufficient to sum up what’s improper with The Kerala Story aside from its lopsided, selective and alarmist theorising concerning the state’s world terror hyperlinks. On a seaside stands a dried-up tree that appears like a prop put there for no specific motive.

The seaside doesn’t resemble any of the seashores of Kasaragod, the place massive elements of the movie are set. The tree, too, is totally out place – it bears testimony to how completely clueless and ham-fisted the makers of The Kerala Story are.

Now to the story for no matter it’s price. Fathima Ba (Adah Sharma), previously Shalini Unnikrishnan, is questioned in a UN incarceration centre by a panel of stone-faced officers. The woman narrates her ordeal. Singled out by a Salafi centre in Kerala and led to some extent of no return, she finally ends up amongst terrorists who don’t have any endurance for ladies who cross the road.

“I was brainwashed,” Fathima/Shalini says. Yes, that could be a good motive why a woman from Thiruvananthapuram would fall in love with a Muslim, develop into pregnant, marry one other Muslim man, convert to Islam and agree like, in her personal phrases, a “robotic slave” to embark on a harmful mission in Syria. By the time we’re midway by way of The Kerala Story, it’s exhausting to determine who’s extra brainwashed – the protagonist or the makers of this insidious movie.

The writing is constantly cringeworthy. The performing is not any higher. The script offers the women traces so stilted that that collectively they’re an act of cinematic terror. The Kerala Story is a pathetic piece of cinema, if one can name it that, with no single saving grace. It is out to vilify an Indian state on flimsy grounds.

Shalini joins a nursing faculty in Kasaragod and strikes right into a hostel room shared by three different ladies – Nimah Matthews (Yogita Bihani) from Kottayam, Geetanjali Menon (Siddhi Idnani) from Kochi and Asifa Ba (Sonia Balani) from Malappuram.

No prizes for guessing, the only real Muslim woman within the quartet is as much as no good. She has an agenda. The three others – two Hindus, one Catholic – stroll into the lure, their eyes huge open. The conversations that the women have are past foolish. They talk about religions, Gods, rituals and the professionals and cons of premarital intercourse. Unbelievably vacuous prattle.

Stupidity scales larger heights when a purported turning level written into the plot hinges on the inconceivable proven fact that the 2 Hindu ladies – Shalini and Geetanjali – have no idea that Christians say grace and Muslims pray earlier than each meal.

The writers of The Kerala Story are clearly concentrating on their core viewers who they clearly don’t assume a lot of. One could be shocked if they really consider that it’s logical for 2 Hindu ladies in a state as multi-religious as Kerala to be unaware of the fundamental cultural mores of adherents of different faiths.

In a police station scene, one of many ladies rattles off numbers to show that Kerala is heading for bother. She claims that greater than 30,000 ladies have been transformed to Islam and weaned away to struggle for ISIS. She quotes a former chief minister of the state as saying that Kerala will develop into an Islamic state in 20 years. The movie makes no try to inform the viewers the place the numbers and that fears have emanated from.

The woman who cites the 30,000 determine ends her diatribe with a declaration that she’s going to come again to the police with unimpeachable proof. I will not cease, she says. She echoes the writers and the director of The Kerala Story – they don’t have any proof definitely worth the title however they preserve occurring regardless as a result of logic and reality should not what they’re in quest of.

That, then, is the story – The Kerala Story is a movie so dangerous that its incompetence would have supplied some leisure had it not performed so unfastened and quick with info and twisted them to swimsuit its express, egregious ends.