Lohith H’s ‘Rakshasha’ brings together horror and a time loop narrative. The one-man show features Satya (Prajwal Devraj), a suspended police officer, who accidentally releases a captured spirit. He struggles to realise the presence of the demon and ends up carrying out a Sisyphean task. The setting is forced to resemble a dilapidated police station. The film lacks jump scares which could have elevated the experience.
The cinematography is engaging, however, the post-editing process needs fine tuning. Time loop plots thrive on repeated elements, but in the excitement of experimentation, ‘Rakshasha’ fails to study the inherent logic of a time loop story. The repetition, here, almost tests the audience’s patience. The ‘unfinished’ story is suggested in the conclusion, and not much is revealed about the suspended officer either. The performance of the actors is fairly convincing, and the background score does a decent job of amplifying the scenes.
There is an engaging legend narrated at the beginning of the film. It does not, however, bring in a sense of contemporaneity. Satya’s battle against the demon, or himself, is the core message of the film. This is barely shown.
The story seems to confuse the genres of mythology and horror. The generic horror elements, such as the presence of a creepy doll and doors shutting by themselves, are a desperate attempt to make the film sell under the horror banner.