The film has a very dramatic feel to it, particularly in the flashback sequences, which take a roundabout way to establish the tragedy of the Rose Villa situation. It does take a while to get into it, really, as Rejin is focused on establishing the people associated with the property. Unlike his reasonably impressive debut Pendulum, which ventured into relatively unexplored territory, Bouma isn’t exactly breaking new ground with its central premise of occultism. To the more seasoned viewer in the genre, a number of the revelations will be pretty obvious, some of them actually quite apparent from a distance.
Despite that, Rejin manages to keep it quite engaging, largely due to how he unfolds the story. A straightforward narrative could have easily made this very dull. Instead, he chooses to go with a non-linear approach, only dropping the relevant information when it’s needed. At various points, what we think is the present isn’t quite the present, and it’s only as the film progresses do we begin to understand the nature of the shifts. It keeps the curiosity alive, though the eventual destination isn’t particularly surprising. Rejin also steers clear of the usual jump scares, favouring atmosphere and occasional bursts of violence. He does know how to create an eerie mood, even if the dialogue often feels thin and the writing struggles to give the central mystery the depth it needs.
The biggest strength of Bouma lies in its technical execution. Sharan Velayudhan’s cinematography makes excellent use of light and space to really convey the sense of isolation, and to effectively differentiate between the two timelines. Christo Xavier’s eclectic score and Jayadevan Chakkadath’s atmospheric sound design, too, go a long way to establishing the mood, and the final mix by MR Rajakrishnan brings it all together. ES Sooraj’s editing is equally deserving of praise for managing the multiple timelines and narrative strands without ever making it too confusing.
For all its technical accomplishments, Bouma begins to lose its grip towards the final stretch. By the time its various puzzles fall into place, it heads exactly where one might expect a conventional occult thriller to go. Worse, the resolution leaves behind several questions that feel less like deliberate ambiguity and more like loose ends the narrative hasn’t quite bothered to address.