‘Maarigallu’ series review: An underwhelming rural thriller in the vein of ‘Kantara’

The pan-Indian success of the Kantara franchise has triggered a trend in the Indian film industry. In 2022, Rajinikanth’s Baba was re-released, hot on the heels of the success of Rishab Shetty’s directorial. Back then, the fantasy genre had begun to thrive, with Brahmastra and Karthikeya minting money at the box office.

This year, the blockbuster run of the Marathi movie Dashavatar shows that the belief systems and folk traditions of indigenous people residing in mysterious forests are slowly becoming the flavour of the industry. The ZEE5 Kannada web series Maarigallu adopts a similar theme but suffers from a severe hangover of Kantara.

In a village in Sirsi, the landlord Ashoka Sharma (Gopalkrishna Deshpande), Mari Gowda (Rangayana Raghu) from the archaeology department, and a group of locals headed by Varadha (Praveen Tej) are on the hunt for a lost treasure, believed to be buried near the village’s Maari temple.

With the movie promising a blend of historical facts (about the Kadamba dynasty) and the traditional village lifestyle, Maarigallu should have ideally transported its viewers into a new world. But the seven-episode mini-series is a bland thriller apart from the final twist. After SK Rao’s atmospheric cinematography establishes the setting nicely, the Devraj Poojary-directed series turns into a patience-testing ride, not about the hunt for the treasure but the search for the treasure that is found and lost (not a major spoiler!).

A still from the series.
| Photo Credit:
ZEE5/YouTube

None of the characters have a mind of their own as they suffer from poor writing. It’s true that money and greed can reveal the dark side of humans. However, the series stretches this idea beyond disbelief, as characters doubt each other without even attempting to think rationally.

Maarigallu would have worked if it had characters with shades of grey. Instead, it opts for adding uninteresting humour, which ends up stunting the screenplay. For instance, Rangayana Raghu is seen in his typically exaggerated comedic role, whereas there was a great opportunity to see him as an intriguing archaeologist.

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Maarigallu is the third Kannada original web series from ZEE5 after Ayyana Maneand Shodha. Barring Shodha, the other two web series have failed to be engaging. They give the impression of watching an enhanced version of a television serial, with makers giving less importance to pacing and increasing the intensity of the plot.

These are early days in the Kannada web series space. The sooner the creators understand that one twist isn’t enough to sustain the interest level of the audience, the better. The events leading up to the big reveal must be worth the time of the viewers, convincing them to come back to the show more than once.