By David Dent
This Bangladeshi supernatural movie is actually four separate half hour stories, originally made for TV, knitted together by director Nuhash Humayun into one feature. There’s no linking story as is usual with portmanteau films, but like a lot of non western genre films all the stories in Pett Kata Shaw (literal translation; ‘Stomach Cut’) have their roots in myth and folklore, which gives them a unified feel.
The four stories comprise: ‘Something Sweet’ aka Mishti Kichu, a ‘be careful what you wish for’ story in which a forgetful sweets seller is granted perfect memory by a demon with a sweet tooth, which turns out to be the vendor’s worst nightmare; ‘No Girls Allowed’ aka Ei Building a Meye Nished in which a guy tries to outwit a fish loving bloodthirsty creature who is lurking in his all male apartment block and has just killed his flatmate; ‘Hearsay’ aka Loke Bole, featuring a bickering couple who become stranded in a remote village infamous as the origin of all local legend; and ‘Call of the Night’ aka Nishir Daak, in which a man, grieving the death of his former girlfriend, investigates the coastal disappearance of street children, lured by the Call of the Night, a being which takes many forms.
Each of the four stories is handled with care and precision, not to mention some humour; the scares are slight although effective when they occur, but overall what impresses about Pett Kata Shaw is the integration of myth and everyday life. The creatures in the stories are not shoehorned in for effect, they’re very much a part of the worlds created by the filmmakers. Overall this is very much worth a look, and unlike most portmanteau movies each story has its own strengths.
Pett Kata Shaw screened as part of Raindance Film Festival 2023.
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