Kapkapiii: The Shreyas Talpade Film Has A Script Missing

SITTING IN 2025, a unique problem plagues Hindi cinema: the effort of watching them has trumped the labour of writing about them. While this might imply that the general quality has elevated, thereby making it difficult to unpack films, the opposite is true. The base level of movies has undergone a rapid deterioration of tragic proportions, and although most films in the last four years will reaffirm this proposition, Sangeeth Sivan’s Kapkapiii shines as a leading contender, at least this month.

I don’t mean this as a jibe, but referring to Kapkapiii as a film is an overreach. Sure, in a strict sense of moving images, it qualifies, but the frivolity with which it unfolds, the indifference it offers and its absolute resistance to meaning suggest otherwise. Think of it like this: you go to watch a film and all you see is one build-up after another; you take it all in, hoping for a resolution, only for the screen to go blank at the moment of truth. It should have been a frustrating exercise, but even what we see in Kapkapiii makes so little sense that, in retrospect, no exposition could have salvaged it.

Based on the Malayalam film Romancham (2023), Kapkapiii is a horror comedy. Except, the only horror is that it exists, and the comedy is that there is no horror. All of this would have meant a harmless taunt if it were not true. Sivan, the late filmmaker, crafted his last film with the excess of sex comedy (in the first 10 minutes, the camera takes every opportunity to point towards a crotch) that is as unfunny as it gets. Yet, it is the lack of effort that is jarring. Scenes, tonally and thematically as disparate as possible, are stitched together like Kapkapiii was edited by a 2-year-old. This is only amplified by the cluelessness of the characters, who fluctuate from feeling scared to acting scary. As if they were reading the script in real time.

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Going into detail about the premise would be redundant and also unnecessary (the story is an illusion), but here’s what happens: six grown-up men live together, and instead of worrying about paying rent, they bring an Ouija board and call a ghost. The idea comes from Manu (Shreyas Talpade), and soon his other friends join in. A regular film would have gone forth with this, depicting the misadventures of these slackers when confronted with a female spirit. But Kapkapiii is not that film. But then again, it is not a film.

Written by Kumar Priyadarshi and Saurabh Anand, Kapkapiii unendingly goes about men asking the ghost questions (her name is Anamika), and she keeps answering them. She is never annoyed. There is a metaphor here about female compliance, but we will not get to that. At some point, another character called Kabir enters (Tusshar Kapoor), and the little sense that the film was making dissipates.

It is one thing to watch Kapoor perform badly and wholly another to watch him perform to a non-existent script. The result is harrowing in a way that you would be convinced the hours you spent watching him shake his head are now forever gone. In any other year, a film like Kapkapiii would have been easy to dismiss as unwatchable. But given the frequency with which bad films keep releasing every week, Kapkapiii has come to encapsulate everything wrong with the Hindi film industry: it has stopped making any effort.

Here are some Shreyas Talpade movies that should be next on your watchlist. Watch them on OTTplay Premium.