Bhaagamathie

We hear a lot of legends about the old booth bungalows in the forests and also, forts that are highly dated. Many talk about these legends with fear and stories confirming them will be even scary. Are all these true? We wonder all the time and think about staying single at those places for one or two nights to investigate. When many of us end up just thinking about investigating the truth, some bravehearts try to get to the bottom and burst the myths or further confirm them. But what if someone is forced to live in such a fearful bungalow? What will they do? Okay, what will you do?

Plot : A huge irrigation project ends up being a brilliant and trecherous plan to exploit the bauxite ores in the region. Not many know about it and the Irrigation minister from the Central Cabinet, Eeshwar Prasad (Jayaram) brings another scam of missing relics to the forefront and announces that he will take retirement from the politics if the state CM doesn’t answer for the sudden missing of the idols.

Chenchela (Anushka Shetty), who is facing jail term for killing her fiance, Shakthi (Unni Mukundan), worked as his Government appointed IAS officer, Personal Secretary for ten years, is house arrested in a booth bungalow for an high profile investigation to malign Eeshwar Prasad’s image. The bungalow is known to be belonging to Queen Bhagamathie and she is believed to be in the bungalow as a ghost. CBI officer Vaishnavi (Asha Sarath) and ACP Sampath (Murali Sharma) try hard to get some information that will help them malign Eeshwar Prasad. Did they succeed? Who is Bhaagamathie? What is the back story of Chenchela? Watch movie for answers …

Performances : Anushka Shetty held the movie together with her performance. She maintains the intensity the character needs and also, an confidence that only she can portray on screen as an IAS officer and Queen Bhaagamathie. After Devasena, this is a value adding character to her resume.

Jayaram, the Malayalam legendary actor, delivered a believable performance as the Central Minister who can do no wrong. Unni Mukundan too is good in his brief role. Murali Sharma and Asha Sarath give required authenticity to the movie as they fit the characters to the tee.

Dhanraj, Prabhas Sreenu, Vidhyulekha Raman and others deliver the necessary effect with their performances.

Technicalities : Cinematographer Madhie lends a huge support to the movie. His shot composition, mainly in the first hour sets the characters and also, the bungalow that becomes a character really well. He uses different shot compositions and concepts to let us involve into the setting. Through out the film, his camera work keeps you glued to the screen with great visuals.

Editor, Kotagiri Venkateswara Rao does a good job in the first hour and his shot selection in composing a scene is good too. But in the second hour, few sequences are cut very poorly that we suddenly feel a bit alienated to the proceedings but he delivers in the climax with a fine cut.

Music by SS Thaman is good but he rehashes the same soundtrack for different scenes with slight changes. While it is adequate to hold the suspense, it would have been better had to experimented more for the kind of sequences that the movie projects.

Director, G. Ashok delivers on the promise after a long time. He did show a lot of promise with Pilla Jamindar but his next two movies did not live upto that promise. Here, he seems have to assembled the right kind of technical staff and cast to execute is vision really well. The visuals he chose compensate for the lack of an unique story and also lend a hand to keep the audience glued even though at times, screenplay seems a bit of a drag.

Few logics that he used to explain the twists and turns are a bit too filmsy but that doesn’t hurt the overall impact. Had he tried to be even more imaginative, the movie could have been even better than what it is.

Analysis : Although we have been watching a surge in horror comedies and stories these days, Bhaagamathie stands out because of it’s impeccable execution. Few logical flaws here and there, do make it predictable and unbelievable but the strength of visual filmmaking saves the day. On the whole, the movie is a good enough fun for the weekend.

Rating : 3/5

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