From Shirley to Amulet to Impetigore and now Kriya, Gothic stories are getting a modern renaissance across different cultures and perspectives. It’s interesting seeing how each culture has reexamined the standard Gothic tale and have incorporated their own heritage and experiences into it. In some ways, Kriya feels the most adventurous of the movies mentioned above as it marries Gothic structures and concepts with Hindu fundamentalism and chauvinistic persecution. This ideology is stitched into the fabric of the film, as Kriya opens with a statement: “In Hindu custom, it is ritually prescribed that a son must perform his father’s last rites…”

But before we get to the ritual, we’re in a dance club, the music pounding and the lights flashing. DJ Neel (Noble Luke) bobs in time with the music, leading his own kind of congregation in ritualized club dance. He meets the eye of Sitara (Navjot Randhawa), lit in pulsating neon red and blue lights, and the two basically eye-fuck each other across the dance floor...which turns into hardcore making out in the backseat of the car. But before it can get more serious, she tells him she doesn’t want to do it here. There’s a better place.

So they drive out to an old manor, drenched in darkness and Gothic goodness. But before Neel can get to the sexy times, he finds himself awkwardly standing in the doorway of a room where Sitara’s father Kamalkant Kumar (M.D. Asif) is dying. Even weirder, Kumar’s mouth is covered in some makeshift muzzle and his hands and feet are bound together. Sitara immediately begins wailing over her father while her mother Tara Devi (Avantika Akerkar) yells at Neel and wants nothing to do with him. She snaps at him that by him being intimate with her daughter he is the personification of Lord Yama, The God of Death.

In the kitchen, Neel is calmed by Magdali (Anuradha Majumder), a servant who has worked for the family for fifteen years and ambiguously and ominously talks about their past. When Neel questions the way they’re treating the father and wonders what happened in this house, she responds, “I don’t ask questions. I simply do my duty.” And while everything is telling Neel he should leave, including mysterious visions he has of a wide-eyed man, covered in blood and accompanied by a demonic voice yelling, “NEEL. IT IS I. YOUR FATHER,” he keeps getting suckered into staying longer.

But to what end?

Kriya holds its cards close to the chest and explores the ambiguities of rituals. It’s a film about the way we preform ritualistic activities without pausing to think why or questioning their intent. From the very beginning when we experience a mating ritual in the form of a dance club, Kriya digs into more esoteric ceremonial practices, such as the binding of the deceased’s big toes or the belief in a widow’s self-immolation on a funeral pyre. The narrative lives on the edge of uncertainty and familiarity. The underlying theme of just following orders or following the religious texts unfailingly comes to the surface when Tara Devi yells at her daughter that “rituals are to be followed, not understood.” So, too, the film asks us to go along with the rites and not question what we’re seeing. Because, in some ways, there’s not a lot of answers. At least in the beginning.

Sexism is also taken to task. The film presents the funeral rituals as a never-ending cycle of trauma all centered around the family’s lack of a son. And even as Tara Devi prepares her husband’s body, the religious leader Panditji (Sudhavna Deshpande) leans into her whispering, “don’t fret. It’s all under control. And you’re looking beautiful” into the nape of her neck. The way the film focuses on bodies both alive and dead brings an almost erotic bent to the proceedings. The corpse’s lips are pressed open while a string is tightly pulled across a living person’s slightly parted lips. Hands massaging feet. Lips kissing. An uncomfortably shot blow job. It’s all so tactile as the camera fetishizes everything from the opening make-out session to the preparation of the body, lending the film an uncomfortable, yet appropriately Gothic, aura of sexuality.

Unfortunately, the acting is a little stilted in spots, particularly when the actors switch from Hindi to English in conversation. Some scenes race from demur and naturalistic to completely over-dramatic in a matter of seconds. And the dreamlike nature infusing some of the narrative decisions mixed with the more down-to-earth aspects of the story gives Kriya an odd sense of pacing. Revelations and twists careen from drama to melodrama and back, sometimes in the same scene. The final revelations also don’t completely come together, at least for someone who’s not too familiar with the Hinduism.

But I think that’s what makes Kriya so fascinating. It takes traditionally Western concepts from the Gothic period, from the mood-drenched manors to cycles of abuse and the use of the past to explore the present, and adds a veneer of Indian culture. It’s exciting to see a different culture take standard tropes and make them their own. A messy film with some poorly executed twists, Kriya still surprises and remains a worthy addition to the Gothic Horror renaissance we’re currently experiencing.