BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE

The breakthrough... Tumbbad is one of the few Indian films that’s truly, nail-bitingly scary.

THE FILM STAGE

Barve and Prasad are able to inject their distinctive culture with routine tropes that lend a visceral familiarity to folklore completely foreign to international audiences. It allows its new terrors and monsters the potential to be seen as more.

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SCREEN DAILY

Competently shot with a handheld feel, the film is given a swelling soundtrack by video game composer Jesper Kyd. And the acting is credible throughout, especially from the three main juvenile leads.

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THE STATESMAN

Raging and Divine...visual imagery of this film is incomparable.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

Higly unusual, visually stunning...not something I will forget.

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THE DECCAN CHRONICLE

A beautiful and a dark master piece.

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DECCAN HERALD

The real winner of the movie is the script. ‘Layered’ is a word critics casually throw around for films they like, but it’s hard to think of another adjective for Tumbbad...A Hindi Horror that shoots across the screen, and my oh my does directorial debutant Rahi Anil Barve and Adesh Prasad have a surprise in store!

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NEWS 18

Above everything else this is a wildly original film with a look and feel that is of the highest standard.

HEAVEN OF HORROR

Tumbbad is pure horror from the beginning. At the same time, it also feels like a fairy-tale. But the very dark and gruesome kind. Much more along the lines of Pan’s Labyrinth or Evil Dead than any Disney Version....This looks like a movie that could just as well have been made in the US or Europe with a huge budget. The sound, image, and effects are all top notch. And the story is so universal that it works across religion and language.

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IHORROR

Tumbbad is a film that grabs hold and pulls you in from the get go. An elegantly-terrifying gem at this year’s Fantastic Fest, this film was a complete surprise and is a straight up transportive and triumphant experience.

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BLOODY DISGUSTING

With a compelling story of greed that spans more than 30 years, a memorable monster and some truly beautiful cinematography, Tumbbad is not to be missed.

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DREAD CENTRAL

Undoubtedly gorgeous and wonderfully atmospheric, Tumbbad is a fascinating journey into historical, both timely and India with a horror twist.

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ASIAN CULTURE VULTURE

Combining myth, horror and fanstasy, ‘Tumbbad’ represents a very different kind of filmmaking than what we are used to in the West and emerging from India.

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TRUE VIEW REVIEWS

The Indian horror film, “Tumbbad,” made its U.S. debut at Fantastic Fest in Austin and it is a film I would really like to scream out loud about so it won’t be missed...

SLASH FILM

A welcoming breed of horror that transcends barrier, creeds, and beliefs.

AIN’T IT COOL

Apart from all the high concept themes, Tumbbad is a creepy children-in-peril film with scary monsters to boot. The period piece context of the story serves as a perfect contrast to the timeless terror that unfolds while also nicely grounding the phantasmagoric elements of the film. The story has lots of heart without betraying the horror elements throughout. It is an extremely well-rounded effort.

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ANONIMACHINEFILI

Taking mythology as a pretext, Tumbbad's operation is certainly very praiseworthy. What we see on the screen is undoubtedly a successful horror story that does not forget to be a spokesperson for a firm complaint of greed and human hybris, showing the terrible consequences when one is foolish enough to put himself against a deity out of control.

NON SOLO CINEMA

Rare that a screenplay produced by four minds ...manages to maintain a high degree of stratification without sacrificing clarity or enjoyment of the whole.

CINEMATOGRAPHE

Tumbbad is a fantasy-horror film in which themes such as rituality and the passage from one generation to another stand out, a very dark and dense film of mythological atmospheres that plays with its own history and with a sense of enchantment that touches the extremes of myth and the real.

SENTIERISELVAGGI

Tsui Hark's fantasy and Spielberg's adventurous iconography can blend into a separate form, which contains that tension to polymorphism and polygamy that only Indian culture can tell. And this magic potion has as its title Tumbbad, powerful and colossal..

TALKY-MEDIA

Tumbbad...brings to mind that magnificent masterpiece of Rapacity, one of the works from which cinema is born as we know it today.

QUINLAN

Tumbbad is a visionary fantasy, which soon slips from the horror parts and from there does not differ.

PAROLEACOLORI

“Tumbbad" is a very special film, which amazes and conquers alternating moments of pure horror to other more intimate, without ever affecting the solidity and linearity of the plot. The historical reconstruction, careful and precise, is of great impact.

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SCROLL.IN

For film lovers, the genre-bending is gratifying. It has been a while since a horror film spoke so eloquently about something as primal as greed and remained true to its Indian (Marathi) setting. 

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THE QUINT

A must watch...genuinely thrilling and a haunting experience.

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FILM COMPANION

Tumbbad is like Nothing You’ve Seen Before In Hindi Cinema...Pay attention to the details like the various locks in the film – the ways in which things are contained. They look like they belong in a museum.

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CINESTAAN

Tumbbad is deliciously morbid and fascinatingly metaphorical.

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LIVE MINT

There are several moments during this 104-minute film that you feel your stomach tightening and clamp your eyes shut in anticipation of what is about to unfold in Tumbbad... Tumbbad is eerie, imaginatively designed, stunningly filmed and well directed....It’s everything this genre feature should be—scary, grisly and full of evil dread.

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GIONA NAZZARO - Film Critic, Journalist, General Delegate of the Venice International Film Critics’ Week

Tumbbad is a fast-paced parable about greed that travels at the speed of an Emilio Salgari’s story shot by Steven Speilberg, and a visionary fantasy film, rich in visual inventions, special effects and blood.

BARADWAJ RANGAN - Film Critic, Writer, Former Deputy Editor of The Hindu

Tumbbad is a truly original horror movie about a haunted nation, possessed not by the devil but by the past. It's been a while since something (apparently) genre-based turned out so rich and mysterious, so defiantly its own thing.

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