Harold Paul

Question: What happens when you cross The Conjuring with The Exorcist and create it in Malayalam? Answer: A very long, painful horror drama that drags on for no good reason. Mammukka is my favourite Malayalam actor and as much as I love to watch him kick a***s of the bad guys it was painful to watch him play the role of a priest cum crime investigator cum exorcist who’s jurisdiction knows no bounds and is blessed with special powers that enables him to walk into people’s homes unannounced and sift through their stuff. Why Mammukka decided to act in this flick is beyond my understanding, a stellar actor like him deserves a much better script and definitely a good screenplay. If this film had been cut by 40 minutes it would have still felt like a suffering you could’ve dealt with but it actually felt like a really long and bad operatic performance. Mollywood writers who write keeping Mammukka in mind need to do better and stop getting inspired by Hollywood horror flicks!

I watched this film with my folks who are big Malayalam cinema buffs. After having heard about the stellar work that was coming out of Kerala’s film industry I was hoping that this film would live up to the reputation of Mollywood. Unfortunately this has to be one of the worst Malayalam films I’ve watched in a decade. Aju Varghese is probably the only actor in the film who seemed like he knew his character. Every other actor in the film seemed super disconnected to the character they were playing. Ganesh looked tired and bored, Lena, a good actress otherwise was unexpectedly bad and quite OTT. The film also revolves around exaggerated stereotypes of certain characters especially of an old doctor with Parkinson’s and a whole bunch of Christian prayer goers. A film is not easy to make however bad it is but I’m absolutely surprised at how clueless the creators were that they didn’t realise the poor quality of the screenplay. This film is the execution of a very poorly conjured script and it seems like it was bad writing stitched together haphazardly. There’s a lot one hopes from the younger generation of Malayalam producers but one wonders what Dhyan Sreenivasan had in mind when he decided to bet his buck on Saajan Bakery.