There is a certain kind of movie that is perfect for inter-city bus trips or flights – the kind that can be consumed while your neighbour snores into your ear and you regret having had that coffee before boarding. Jatadhara is one such film.

The Telugu occult thriller directed by Venkat Kalyan and Abhishek Jaiswal – also dubbed into Hindi – lands its first joke in its disclaimer: the movie doesn’t endorse superstition.

Humour is always on the fringes of Shiva’s quest to understand his true destiny. Scripture-quoting gurus, mumbo jumbo-spouting tantriks, possessed humans, kilos of ash – the 135-minute film has it all.

Shiva (Sudheer Babu) is an obsessive ghost hunter despite claiming that he doesn’t believe in ghosts. Shiva soon unearths a connection to a demoness who guards a treasure of gold and has a vampire-like affinity for blood. She also has a charming tendency to clatter her teeth, as though she is adjusting her divine dentures.

The demoness (Sonakshi Sinha) has already had an encounter with the gold-greedy Shobha (Shilpa Shirodkar). The clash between her and Shiva is the 135-minute movie’s highlight, coming after a boring exposition that could have been wrapped up in a few scenes.

Everything in the movie is unabashedly tacky, from the visual effects to the performances. The belief in pseudoscience and sorcery is serious and deep. There appears to be no difference between religion and black magic.

Even the floods in Kerala in 2018 is the result of human interference in the state of the Padmanabhaswamy temple’s mysterious gold reserves. Shiva earnestly explains the usefulness of the Tesla coil for ghost detection.

Jatadhara takes itself so seriously that it enacts a tantric ritual in full. The film pauses only to regard the truth about Shiva’s past, recovering in time to dish out unabashed ludicrousness.

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