Guardian Review: Template Horror Thriller Film

 Ashwin Ram

Guardian is an horror-thriller genre flick starring Hansika Motwani in the lead role. Directed by Sabari Gireesan and Guru Saravanan. The music is composed by Sam.C.S.

Premise:

Hansika considers herself unlucky since childhood. Suddenly, whatever she wishes happens and it is due to the power of a possessed crystal. Inside it is an angry ghost seeking revenge on the bad guys. How Hansika deals with the situation is the crux of the story.

Writing/ Direction:

A template revenge horror movie, yet the core element using which the first half story travels is pretty different and had the potential to be developed into an interesting one. The flashback reasoning is convincing enough to be presented as an emotionally impactful one, fitting title too. Despite getting two of the main basic writing points of the film right, there are absolutely no redeeming qualities to mention as every department involved has worked terribly. Heroine is established as a person with zero luck, as per their logic she can be considered to have not brushed her teeth since birth, the creative ideas used are that lame. The screenplay is predictable to the core, the film is outdated to the extent that there is a separate track-comedy. An infinite number of irrelevant details are added in the flow just to fill the space, as the directors try and push it so hard to set the interval block at a particular situation. After adding all the monotonous stuff in the script in the name of romance, comedy, etc the second half focuses on the main subject, but it is executed in a manner that no one cares about. The characters are so disjoint, the scenes are so clumsy, the writing is so random and what not.

Performances:

Hansika has played her part decently, but it’s completely unacceptable to still continue to have lip-sync issues even after being 15 years in the industry. The supporting artists, especially in the villain side are quite famous, however the directors have not given them any scope to perform, zero dynamics in characterizations, they were merely evil puppets on-screen. Motta Rajendran and Pazhaya Joke Thangadurai are in for the comedy quotient, absolutely no use as they keep blabbering some toilet jokes in the name of humor and their portions are too distant from the main plot.

Technicalities:

Not even a single technical aspect of the film will cross the single digit mark. The montages are piled up on one track and the songs are playing on the pole opposite space that are completely out of sync. Background score is extremely loud and creates a headache alongside the headspin show. Cameraman K.A Sakthivel had done a decent job. Decent VFX a little bit more effort could have made a change better. Amidst some worst circumstance, the crisp 2-hours runtime acted as savior, thanks to the editor.

Bottomline

With the special element that drives the first hour and the existing intent in the later half’s flashback, the film could have at least been a fairly entertaining horror thriller if the screen-writing was done right and the execution was minimally pleasing. However, film works as a template revenge horror thriller.

Rating - 2.5/ 5