THE BOGEYMAN
Kummatty
The Bogeyman is a film version of an Indian folk-tale about children and can be appreciated by children of all ages.
"The Bogeyman must be accounted the most fully-achieved work from G. Aravindan, the Malayalam director of Golden Sita and The Circus Tent. Aravindan is a miniaturist, with a marvellous eye for detail. Kummatty, the bogeyman, who comes to a remote village, befriends the children and then turns them one by one - just as a tease - into animals, is a superb creation. But what makes the film so complete in itself is its inner as well as its outer eye. Image after image of the wind-swept plains of Malabar, underlined by some lovely folk-songs, works on the imagination so that you can't just say it is only a cameraman‘s film. I haven't seen a film in ages which has quite the same power to charm without causing the slightest feeling of being taken in by well-crafted sentimentality."
Derek Malcolm The Guardian