Gruham

Actor Siddharth has been fighting it hard at the box office, trying to establish himself as a lead star who can pull good crowds in. He lost lot of his box office status even though he has a recognition as a popular actor. Can Gruham help him correct that? Can it be the first of many successes that will give Siddharth his rightful place back as a Box Office star?

Plot : We cannot reveal the suspense factor of a horror film in the review itself. It needs to be seen and enjoyed. But to give you gist of what to expect, we will sum up the story in few lines, without spoilers.

Krishna (Siddharth) is a neurosurgeon and a Christian family of Paul (Atul Kulkarni) shift next door to him. Jennifer (Victor Anisha) finds him more attractive and Krishna’s wife (Andrea Jeremiah) is not entirely comfort with that. One night Jennifer experiences some strange incidents and Krishna tries to solve the mystery. He gets entangled into the web as well. How? Why does the ghost attack these family members and what is Krishna’s role in all this? Watch it on screen to know the answers…

Performances : Siddharth as Krishna is good in his role. He doesn’t really get much to do until the climax and he does really pull off some scary scenes with conviction. Director keeps him as the centre point in many scenes but he also cleverly tries to give space to the story to unfold as well.

Suresh as psychiatrist gets some good punch lines to deliver for comic relief. He also helps in digging up the case and the senior actor comes with a good performance. Anisha Victor takes the cake in this movie as the effected person in the first half and she holds key to many parts of the film without a doubt.

Atul Kulkarni, Andrea Jeremiah, Muralidharan all come up with good performances in the space they are given.

Technicalities : Camerawork is the major highlight in the horror films, you need the angles to be weird, moments to be typical enough to get entangled into the horror experience. Shreyas Krishna delivers his best in regards to coming up with good shots and gives ample space for VFX artists to perform their magic as well.

Back Ground score and Sound design are the other important factors. Sound designer created a good travelling sound effects and also delivered the best quality sound to make the ambiance more real in a surreal story. Girishh came up with a good soundtrack and Back Ground score to help the movie.

Editing by Lawrence Kishore is crisp and at times he tries to hold back critical information and the cut seems to be better than the script. As many scenes seem to work with major impact after assembling them the way he did. He did not let the familiarity and clichés to effect the movie with some crisp edits.

Writer and director, Milind Rau showed some maturity for a first filmmaker in handling the horror well. He held back critical information to deliver a punch well. Some could have been knock out punches had to established them well enough like a puzzle rather than telling it just like a plain thrill oriented film. It is good to have a major twist and open it in the end but he needed to plot it well to give add more and more scare factor. Suspense always gives rise to unknown and unknown gives rise to major fear. He tries to hold on to the logics and rules of his world well enough but he misses out on proper reasoning towards the climax. Had he slightly improved on that, the movie could have been more scarier in the second half that it ended to be.

Analysis : This movie when it comes to delivering a technically solid horror film, it is on par with low budget Hollywood Horror films. But there is a lot of familiarity in the scenes and script. Still, there is a major suspense to keep audience glued and back story is strong enough too. On the whole, you can expect a good scary yet bumpy ride.

Rating : 3/5