A confused story

An uneven marriage of a romance with horror, the narrative in A Wedding Story shudders and weaves through unfortunate circumstances as wedding festivities are underway. This film even has a strange unlettered connection with the simultaneous Hollywood release The Crow wherein ‘sacrifice’ is depicted as the epitome of eternal love. But that’s where the similarity begins and ends.

A Wedding Story is a straightforward wedding video gone rabid in its attempt to foster elements of blind faith and questionable astrology as twin originators of nihilism in a family that has just encountered the death of a loved one during an inauspicious period. Is there an inauspicious time even for death?

The film opens with the death of the head of a family. It’s panchak kaal — considered to be an inauspicious time and a special puja needs to be performed for the dead person’s soul to rest in peace. While most of the extended family members agree on the ritual, the dead man’s son opposes it. So, the puja is never completed and a series of unfortunate events follow right in the midst of wedding festivities.

The opening salvo was meant to be a forewarning of things to come. So, when Vikram (Vaibhav Tatwawadi) and Preethi (Mukti Mohan) are eager to get married without waiting for the mourning period to get over, they find themselves battling forces of evil that keep threatening their dreams of happily ever after. The narrative here seems a little confused. The two central characters Vikram and Preethi, non-believers in the traditional religious mores, do everything to convince their family that their marriage must happen soon - even with the shadow of death looming large. And, it’s pretty much questionable when they continue with the never-ending festivities even when concurrent deaths occur while the festivities are on. It feels rather weird that they go through the motions of being alarmed, grieving and immediately get back to dancing, drinking and singing songs while conveniently forgetting about the issue that plagues them. Everyone appears to be pandering to the couple even when their lives appear to be on the line.

After the initial introduction of the panchak kaal, the narrative rushes into song, dance and party mode carelessly weaving through wilful intransigence as it hurtles towards an end play that fails to take effect. The wedding-video-like narrative shot in baffling, shaky handheld style with blurry segments and jump scares that barely register, fails to provide intrigue, suspense or thrills. A predictable storyline and traditional horror tropes compound the problem here. The songs, mostly Punjabi, are imminently forgettable, the background score tries hard to spook us with sudden bursts and the dialogues fail to have much meaning. There’s so much yakking going on that it becomes terribly tedious. This film is a rather feeble discordant attempt that was neither scary nor entertaining.