My Thoughts on Baramulla
Baramulla begins with a quiet unease that settles in almost immediately - cold, slow, and strangely beautiful, where the first few minutes feels like an entire world washed in peaceful white and grey - but it's a whiteness that isn’t comforting, as it feels more empty, like something has been take away.
Ridwaan, fits perfectly into this frozen world, and he’s a man of logic, someone who believes the world can be fixed with rules and order. and someone who doesn’t perform his emotions; he hides them, which makes you want to look closer.
The story sends him to investigate the disappearance of several children in a small Kashmiri town, and what begins as a standard police assignment slowly turns into something personal, something that chips away at his sense of reason.
As the mystery unfolds, we learn that Ridwaan’s own family are drawn into the same darkness he’s trying to uncover, and that’s when the film stops being just a dark thriller and becomes a lot more haunting in an emotional sense.
Bhasha Sumbli as Gulnar is wonderful here, and is the emotional core of the film, and while she doesn’t get many loud moments, she doesn’t need them, as her calmness anchors the story, where you believe every glance she gives.
There’s a lovely domestic tenderness in the way she and Kaul share space, even when they’re not speaking, and it reminds you yet again that horror works best when it’s rooted in something familiar, and something we recognize.
Ridwaan, who has a fragile relationship with his daughter, Noorie, where you can sense a history between them, something unspoken that keeps them apart, and when Noorie becomes a target of the same strange force haunting the town, it doesn’t just raise the stakes, it changes the tone entirely, where the film’s supernatural tension feels deeply human.
But Baramulla doesn’t let itself get lost in sentimentality, and the writing by Aditya Dhar, Aditya Suhas Jambhale, and Monal Thaakar keeps a steady hand, as the plot juggles politics, folklore, and psychological tension, but it never feels like too much.
I liked how the film builds everything slowly, and it doesn’t rush the suspense - it grows out of mood and detail rather than jump scares or loud music, with a real confidence to it, as the film attempts to say something deeper about loss - not just personal loss, but collective memory.
The horror comes from what people choose to forget, and where the ghosts are metaphors and reminders of what happens when history is buried and silence takes its place.
Technically, the film is also good, where the cinematography captures Kashmir’s vastness without romanticizing it, where the snow, the light, the distance between people, all works together to create an atmosphere that feels both beautiful and isolating, and while the score is sparse, it aim is not to intrude, but to just breath along with the story.
The film’s pacing might test the patience of some viewers though, as at times you do wish the film moved a bit faster, but then again, the slowness is part of its rhythm, and it’s what gives Baramulla its texture, but by the time the mystery unfolds, Baramulla has become something larger than a ghost story.
Baramulla is a film that doesn't shout - it whispers, and somehow, that whisper stays with you long after you’ve stepped out of its frozen world.