The Horror-Comedy That’s All Rum and No Coke
There’s a special place in cinematic purgatory reserved for movies that try to be scary, funny, and thrilling all at once—then end up being none of the above. Rum, Sai Bharath’s 2017 Tamil-language horror comedy thriller (yes, all four genres crammed into one), is one such film. It’s the kind of experience that makes you question not only the filmmaker’s intentions but also your own life choices.
This movie is called Rum, which might be short for “Random Unintelligible Mess.” Or maybe it’s a warning label—because unless you’ve had actual rum before watching it, you’re going to need divine intervention to survive.
Haunted by Bad Writing
The film opens with two men wandering into a haunted bungalow and being immediately killed by a mysterious force. It’s a strong start, in the sense that the audience also dies a little inside. Then we shift to our hero, Shiva (Hrishikesh), a jewel thief who leads a gang so incompetent they could make Home Alone’s burglars look like Ocean’s Eleven.
After stealing priceless gems from a museum, they flee into the woods, only to be blackmailed by a police officer named Thomas (Narain), who looks like he’s perpetually regretting signing the contract. The gang hides in a creepy bungalow that screams “we have ghosts!” but apparently, that’s still a better idea than paying their bribe.
Soon enough, supernatural hijinks begin—lights flicker, doors creak, and the audience’s will to live fades. The ghosts, naturally, are out for revenge. And who can blame them? Even the afterlife would be furious about this script.
The Thieves Who Couldn’t Steal a Scene
Let’s talk about our “heroes.” Shiva and his gang are supposed to be professional thieves, but they spend most of their screen time arguing, screaming, and falling for the most obvious horror clichés imaginable. One of them, Nepali (Amzath Khan), turns out to be a mole working for Thomas. But before that twist can matter, he’s killed by the ghost, which is the film’s way of mercifully removing a subplot that wasn’t going anywhere anyway.
The acting? Imagine if someone filmed a rehearsal for a college skit and forgot to add emotion. Hrishikesh does his best to look heroic, but he’s upstaged by the bungalow’s wallpaper. Vivek, a usually reliable comedian, is reduced to yelling one-liners that sound like they were written by a chatbot with a hangover. Sanchita Shetty, as Shiva’s girlfriend Riya, spends most of the movie alternating between looking terrified and wondering if this will hurt her career.
Enter Thomas: The World’s Most Incompetent Villain
Inspector Thomas (Narain) is a crooked cop with all the menace of a mildly annoyed bank teller. He’s supposed to be the human villain—greedy, cruel, and responsible for the original haunting—but mostly, he just looks tired. You can practically see him thinking, “I could’ve been in a real crime thriller right now.”
His backstory is revealed in a flashback that’s meant to be tragic and horrifying but plays out like a badly edited soap opera. Thomas and his men rape and murder Thulasi (Miya) in the same bungalow, thus triggering the ghostly revenge plot. But even that central act of evil is handled with the kind of tonal confusion that leaves you wondering whether the filmmakers were aiming for social commentary or just trying to pad the runtime.
The Paranormal Investigator Who Should’ve Stayed Home
As if the film wasn’t confused enough, we also get a paranormal investigator who shows up halfway through like he’s wandered in from a different movie. He advises Thomas to get a “mercury stone” to protect himself from the spirits—a solution that sounds less like science and more like something you’d overhear at a particularly sketchy yoga retreat.
Needless to say, the mercury stone doesn’t work, the ghosts win, and the investigator disappears as mysteriously as he arrived. The only logical explanation is that he realized he was in Rum and ran for his life.
The Ghosts Deserve an Oscar
Let’s give credit where it’s due: the ghosts are the most relatable characters here. They were wronged, they want revenge, and they don’t waste time explaining their motivations in long, boring monologues. When they kill people, they do it efficiently—something the film’s editing department could learn from.
Miya as Thulasi plays the spirit with genuine intensity, despite being saddled with glowing eyes and effects straight out of a 2003 PowerPoint transition. You can tell she’s trying to make the haunting scenes scary, but the direction and music conspire against her. Every time something creepy happens, Anirudh Ravichander’s background score kicks in like a rock concert in an exorcism.
Comedy That’s Scarier Than the Horror
The movie is billed as a horror comedy thriller, which is ambitious, because it fails spectacularly at all three. The comedy is forced, the horror is predictable, and the thrills are non-existent. Vivek’s comedic timing, usually impeccable, is wasted on bad punchlines about ghosts and thievery.
Example: there’s a scene where the gang screams after seeing a moving chair, and one of them yells, “It’s a ghost! Let’s charge it!” If that line made you laugh, congratulations—you’re more entertained than anyone who actually saw the movie.
The tonal whiplash is real. One minute, someone’s making a joke about fear; the next, we’re watching a flashback of assault and murder. It’s like The Conjuring met Scary Movie, and both left in disgust halfway through.
Visuals, Logic, and Other Missing Elements
Visually, Rum is decent in spurts. The haunted bungalow is suitably gloomy, with flickering lights and long shadows that could’ve built real atmosphere if the camera didn’t keep cutting to people screaming. But the pacing kills any sense of dread. Every time tension builds, someone cracks a joke or the music swells unnecessarily, yanking the viewer out of the moment.
And don’t even ask about logic. Why do professional thieves decide to hide in a haunted mansion? Why does the cop wait until half his men are dead to call for supernatural help? Why does the ghost kill everyone except the people who actually caused her death until the last five minutes? By the end, the only mystery left is how this script got greenlit.
The Climax: Ghosts for Justice
The final act is a blur of screaming, ghost attacks, and moral lessons nobody asked for. The spirits finally get their revenge on Thomas, who dies in what should be a satisfying scene—but by then, you’re too numb to care. Shiva and his friends escape with the gems, apparently learning nothing from the experience.
The film ends with the gang relaxing on vacation, laughing, and selling the stolen stones, proving that in Rum, crime not only pays—it also gets a beach holiday. It’s a conclusion so bizarre it almost feels like a punchline, except the joke’s on us.
The Verdict on Verdict
Rum tries to mix supernatural horror with slapstick humor and crime thriller tropes. What we get instead is a cinematic cocktail that tastes like it was mixed in the dark—with kerosene. The film doesn’t know what it wants to be: a ghost story? A redemption arc? A satire? Ultimately, it’s none of them.
The only consistent theme is regret—ours for watching it, and probably the cast’s for signing on.
Still, it’s not entirely without charm. The ghosts are mildly effective, the music occasionally slaps, and there’s a kind of unintentional comedy in how earnestly the film takes itself. Watching Rum is like seeing someone trip, recover, and trip again—for two straight hours.
So here’s the real verdict: Rum is a film that proves not all spirits need to be consumed. Some should be exorcised—preferably before release.
