Simply Perfect

Brilliant and touching

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I don't quite get the hyperbole of some of the reviews of this film on either end. Tears of Kali is not at all a slightly flawed masterpiece, but it doesn't completely suck, either.On the low budget and cheesy end, aspects of the film play like a stereotypical Uwe Boll flick; it's difficult to not cynically think of this as another German tax shelter film. Stylistically and atmospherically, Tears of Kali occupies a weird middle ground between recent microbudget schlock like Insaniac (2002), The Crucifier (2005) and The Bonesetter (2003), and a major studio, high-budget horror film. If you watch it expecting microbudget schlock, as I did after seeing the DVD title screen sequence (like most films, I purposefully avoided knowing much about the film before I popped it into my DVD player), you'll be impressed with the level of professionalism exhibited. But if you've only watched major studio, high-budget horror, it's entirely understandable that you'd come to the conclusion that this is one of the worst films ever. The bottom line, then, is that you should probably only watch Tears of Kali after you've watched at least a dozen or so microbudget films. That way the technical clunkiness, the relative incoherence of much of the story, and the numerous other problems with the script, performances, direction, editing and so on won't be such culture shock, and you'll be able to better appreciate what Tears of Kali does get right.The premise of the film and even many ways in which the story is developed are impressive. There are a lot of good ideas here, both plotwise and structurally. I'm a fan of "anthology" films as well as television shows like The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker and Tales from the Crypt, so the fact that the script is broken up into three separate but related stories along with bookended segments worked well for me. Writer/director Andreas Marschall even weaves in a fair amount of sophisticated, nuanced threads, thematically and more literally, allowing viewers to interlock the stories more with the bookended segments in their heads as they watch.However, Marschall errs on one serious front--the "show, don't tell" rule. Far too much of the film consists of people talking about interesting events that we do not get to see. The first story after the opening bookend is especially guilty of this, and it doesn't help that the story being told is fairly complex and kinda gobbledy-gooky (it hinges, as does the whole film, on a maybe ridiculous but fun mixture of mystic, new-agey psychology, cults and a couple ideas from Indian religions), and it doesn't help that the story being told has lots of characters, most of whom have odd names (and the film doesn't have the greatest English dubbing job, and the DVD has no subtitles).Surely the show-don't-tell violation was chosen to keep the budget down. Even with the bookends, Marschall only needed four settings, most limited to just a couple rooms, and he avoided having to hire lots of extras, having to work his way through complicated logistical issues of location shooting and so on. While that's a good excuse for limiting the film, it's not a good enough excuse to violate the "show don't tell" rule in the way that it's violated here, because it seriously hurts the film.Horror fans who enjoy gore and special effects will also find enough to like here, as long as they're not the kind of gorehound who gets wrapped up in arguments about what film is the goriest. Quite a few scenes are a bit brutal and difficult to watch, and especially compared to most microbudget films, the effects and make-up are extremely impressive. Each story hinges on some twist of character or another that results in a good, suspenseful and visceral extended sequence. Marschall has his mechanics down well for those kinds of scenes, with the exception that occasionally "battle" scenes are a bit too choppy and blurry. In terms of visceralness, the bookended sequences reminded me a bit of the Nix-cult scenes in Lord of Illusions (1995), but unfortunately they're not shot, acted or constructed quite as well.In any event, if you're a horror fanatic to the extent that you're a completist--that is, you try to see every horror film ever made--there's plenty to enjoy in Tears of Kali as long as you're generously forgiving. By definition, though, you must be generously forgiving of horror in general to be that kind of fan (otherwise you wouldn't subject yourself to all of those schlocky films, and that's pretty undeniably a large number of films). If you can the positives to fare like The Christmas Season Massacre (2001) or Silo Killer (2002), then you'll find plenty of positives in Tears of Kali, too. Just don't expect anything close to a masterpiece.

This movie has its ups and downs, but to me the good stuff in this movie very much outweighs the bads...What's not so good about the movie are indeed sometimes the dialogue, the sounds, the lighting(am I the only one who noticed the way the sets were lighted was amateur, and the acting....What is very good are the highly original storyline, the very intense atmosphere, the gore factor which is very high, and the effects which are done supremely.So, definitely worth watching, or maybe even a must-see for all you horror and gore fans....

This movie was kind of interesting...I had to watch it for a college class about India, however the synopsis tells you this movie is about one thing when it doesn't really contain much cold, hard information on those details. It is not really true to the synopsis until the very end where they sloppily try to tie all the elements together. The gore factor is superb, however. Even right at the very beginning, you want to look away because the gore is pretty intense. Only watch this movie if you want to see some cool gore, because the plot is thin and will make you sad that you wasted time listening to it. I've seen rumors on other websites about this movie being based on true events, however you can not find any information about it online...so basically this movie was a waste of time to watch.

Laughed a lot - because it is so incredibly bad - sorry folks, but definitely one of the worst movies I have ever seen... I know it is low budget, but anyway: the actors behave like playing in a soap, the dialogues are absolutely crappy and the last time I have seen such odd pictures was at a trash nite at some youth video festival ten years ago. I really appreciate that people gather together and shoot cheap movies, but at least a certain amount of quality should be accomplished. But at least one good thing: the first three minutes of the movie were quiet interesting and looked okay - and the score was really worth listening to. The DVD cover promised a lot, but that is by far the best this film has to offer...