Karu- A Stale Supernatural Thriller
Sai Pallavi may not have the looks of a regular glam doll that the mainstream cinema demands but she definitely has the potential to pull off a movie with her poise and screen presence if a proper role is written for her. She proved her acting mettle with sparkling performances as Malar and Bhanumathi in Premam and Fida respectively and became a heartthrob among the youth of both the industries. Her most-awaited debut in Kollywood Diya (Kanam in Telugu) hit the theatres recently after being postponed to a later date to a later date.
Diya/Kanam is a supernatural thriller, directed by AL Vijay who earlier directed movies like Deiva Thirumagal, Thandavam and Thalaiva. The movie is bankrolled by Lyca Productions. The movie has Naga Shourya aside Sai Pallavi, RJ Balaji (Tamil)/Priyadarshi (Telugu) Nizhalgal Ravi, Santhana Bharathi.
STORY
The movie opens in hospital premises where the Tulasi (Sai Pallavi) is forced to abort her child, impregnated by lover Krishna( Naga Shourya), owing to pressure from the families of both the parties involved in this affair. The fact that they are too young in life to lead a marital life and are have not yet settled in life, their parents are left with no choice but resort to this severe step to save their dignity and keep their affair concealed from the outside world. They are prompted to take this harsh decision for the future of their kids.
Five years later, the pair gets married and shift to a well-furnished flat where the actual story unfolds. The thought of having killed the foetus keeps haunting Tulasi and she keeps draws sketches of the imaginary child (Diya) of her growing years in her memory. Although she returns to a normal state after a small counselling session from her husband, their destiny has some other plans to create chaos in their lives after Diya appears in real and start interfering in their lives.
A series of murders by the foetus-spirit, Diya, take place where the victims are the family members the people involved in the foeticide, which includes all the people who approved this action. The murders start from Krishna’s father to Tulasi’s mother to Tulasi uncle till the doctor (Sujitha), who aborted her. The last one in the list, yet to be killed, is Krishna. The rest of the story is all about how Tulasi tries to save him from being killed.
ANALYSIS
Diya/Kanam is a stale and a vapid supernatural thriller that really has nothing to offer to the audience. The movie is completely deprived of shrills and chills if you are keen about the thrill factor. Maybe the feeling of a supernatural element’s presence should coerce you to feel thrilled because it hardly has an edge of the seat moments. The story is limp with a lacklustre screenplay. There is no back story, or twists or anything intriguing that you expect from a conventional supernatural thriller. Â The movie is an outcome of a short film idea metaphorizing into a full-length feature just to preach a message on a big screen. That’s not to belittle the message given in the movie but what’s uninterestingly interesting in the movie is the fact that a foetus can also become a ghost and can think of taking revenge, who actually never lived on this planet because you have an afterlife only when you have lived a life and revenge seeking instinct is of a human and not a foetus. (Maybe human instincts start developing in the mother’s womb. Only science can answer this). The director used the span of 5 years window as a rescue to explain the foetus growing into a five-year-old girl child (foetus child) because you cant see on the screen a spirit of infant crawling or a toddler wobbly walking.
The movie has a plot similar to Kannada movie U-turn. Both have a social message laced with a supernatural story. The fashion in which the murders happen reminds us of the movie Eeram. If Eeram (Vaishali) has water as a common element to take lives of the perpetrators, here there is this element of breath suffocation that serves a connecting point among the murders. Perhaps that’s what occurs when a foetus is killed in the method of abortion. The climax too is confusing. We don’t understand how Tulasi meets her daughter, as she is seen alive, after being defibrillated in a hospital (It is a cinematic liberty, perhaps).
Sai Pallavi tried to do her bit to save the movie and her performance is the only saviour in the movie. It may not be the best debut for her in Kollywood but the decision doing a role in a female-centric movie seems to be wise. Naga Shourya did not have much scope to perform in the role. It’s not comprehensible why the director wanted RJ Balaji /Priyadarshi to crack jokes in the wrong places while dealing with a serious investigative case. His role did not have any substance in the movie. Also, the director should have put an effort atleast to extract acting from the kid who played the spirit in the movie, for most of the time she looks blank on the screen.
TECHNICALITIES
The visuals and BGM were good, if not brilliant. The message is effective and thought-provoking but not very new or something contemporary. As the ending cards scroll, we are listed with statistics about the foeticides and a takeaway message “What if the girl foetuses become Indira Gandhi, Kalpana Chawla and Sania Mirza?”.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
Well, the message may hold true but there are a variety of reasons for someone to take this harsh decision of aborting a child, like marital conditions, family circumstances, financial status etc. This act is unwelcomed in any woman’s life.
Overall, Diya/Kanam can be labelled as a stale supernatural thriller, that doesn’t keep you engaged, even with a short run time.
