Nirdesh Singh

Varathan – a little let down when it could have been much more Abi and Priya, a good looking urbane couple are trying to start a new life in her ancestral house in the hills of Kerala. Abi has just lost his job in Dubai. Kerala is about to lose that utopian veneer that you have built up watching these movies. But then that Bullet-riding mundu-wearing son of a goon is no different from the North wearing goggals. The dread factor is amped up by the background music and camera angles; so while the countryside remains as beautiful, the men in God’s Own Country are spoiling for some depravity. And then when finally the henpecked husband transforms into a mean fighting machine in the matter of few minutes, the spell of the so far engaging movie is broken. The storywriters could have given Abi a backstory which would have made the transformation believable. The old house with its cellars and basements throws in few red herrings in the beginning when in fact they could have been used in the climax to good effect. So for the first time, a FFF movie goes unabashedly formulaic in the last few minutes, though a little unsavoury but still providing that delicious sadistic relief of revenge.