Anushka Shetty has accepted to do the movie Nishabdam after a gap of one and half year, since her last movie. She last did Bhagmathie and the movie became a huge box office success. She has decided to work for Nishabdam as she liked the role of a deaf & dumb girl role. Hemanth Madhukar after Vasthadu Naa Raju, made this movie. Let’s discuss, how it is …
Plot: A Woodside Villa in USA gets the reputation of being haunted house. We see Sakshi (Anushka) and Anthony (Madhavan) at the villa. People believe Josephine painting in the villa kills people. Anthony goes around the house and he is found dead by Sakshi. Her left hand is cut too. She runs for the help of police.
Cop Mahalakshmi (Anjali) is assigned the case and she gets to know that Sakshi believes her friend, Sonali (Shalini Pandey), who died few days ago killed him after becoming a ghost. With the help of another cop, Richard Dickens (Michael Madsen), she has to solve the case. We see Vivek (Subbaraju) a friend of Sakshi roaming around in a hoodie, suspiciously. What really happened? Who killed Anthony? Who is Sonali? Watch the movie to know answers …
Performances: Anushka Shetty tried to be believable as a deaf and dumb girl. She couldn’t help herself but react in few scenes as the other characters talk to her normally. In some scenes they randomly use sign language and others don’t. Even Anushka completed her performance in the same way. Director should have taken care of it.
Madhavan seems to have lost interest in the mid way even though he liked the premise and the character. His performance in Savyasachi is far better than this.
Anjali had been asked to give one expression and seems like even though she couldn’t help herself to give another one, director strictly restricted her. Michael Madsen just showed up on the sets and the team asked him to things randomly to finish off their work. That is how, one feels after watching him.
All others seem to have similar problem except for Shalini Pandey, she tried something.
Technicalities: Cinematography by Shaneil Deo is good in parts and rushed in many scenes. He seems to have ordered some old handy cams in some scenes. That is how bad the quality is.
Writers Hemanth Madhukar and Kona Venkat just did not come up with a screenplay that does justice to their own story. Characters seem to have random motivations and they randomly do things.
As a director, Madhukar did not bother about building up a character for important people in his story. He did not give them enough time to register to audiences. If people think they are watching Anushka, Madhavan, Anjali and a Hollywood actor walking and running randomly rather than identifying them as characters at least for a 20 or 30 minute period of the film, then the entire plot, effort to make a movie seem meaningless.
Movie misses pep that we need in a thriller and life as well. Each frame seems to have been in a competition with the other frame to seem even more dull and bad. Knowing that the movie finished shooting long before lockdowns and pandemic, one wonders why did they rush so much as editing, score and songs, performances – nothing clicks.
Analysis: Movie starts off well with an old haunted house story and Madhavan’s episode. We tend to think that the movie might have been inspired from “The Conjuring” series for a couple of minutes. But the movie takes a good diversion and the back stories of characters open up well enough. But once the police investigation takes prominence, movie loses all the base. There seems to have been a rush for the filmmakers to finish the movie in a tight schedule. Otherwise, there is no clear cut explanation for actors, mainly, Micheal Madsen and Subbaraju sleep walking in the entire film.
Even more prominently Madhavan, Anushka appear to be guest stars in a film that has been sold on their name. Anjali gets a confusing role and each scene seems to have been executed in a rush. We cannot recommend this movie as even a lazy weekend watch!
Bottom line: Movie doesn’t deserve your attention
Rating: 2.5/5
