Katteri Review

Ashwin Ram

Katteri is a long due for release horror-comedy genre flick directed by Deekay of Yamirukka Bayamaen fame. The film stars Vaibhav, Sonam Bajwa, Varalakshmi Sarathkumar, Aathmika, Karunakaran, Ravi Maria, etc.

Premise

In the 1960s, all the people in a village are murdered by a stranger who makes the incident look like an accident. In the present, Vaibhav and his bunch of fellow kidnappers enter the village in search of their friend. The game of the ghosts begins.

Writing/ Direction

The movie starts off with an interesting prelude that creates curiosity about the horror factor. The next thirty minutes kind of sets the characters in a dull manner and lands at the centre spot. If the sequences and parallel comedy tracks were written and executed properly, it would’ve been a fun ride. But all we get is very minimal laughable moments, the rest are so pathetic and dirty. It has a bunch of old-school slapstick humour that miserably fails to work out, and a truckload of bathroom jokes that are hard to tolerate. In Yamirukka Bayamaen, the story was placed in a single bungalow, similarly here it revolves around a small village, but the way of handling is so lethargic right from the script. Situations are poorly formed, so the scenes naturally don’t have that attention-grab factor. The flashback has that cinematic fantasy element, but it has been treated in a hopeless manner. The ‘Katteri’ looks like one big blob of mockery. Even before that, the buildups aren’t scary, in fact they are very predictable and boring. The climax is abrupt, but certain tasteless portions are stretched and explained overly long.

Performances

Vaibhav has no scope to perform, not only that but he doesn’t have any jokes to offer as well. Both the heroines Sonam Bajwa and Aathmika are just used for their attractive looks with glamorous attires, no big role in the story to play. Varalakshmi Sarathkumar seems to be a needless additional character at instance, but evolves into the central character, her portions are somewhat better than the rest of the movie. Ravi Maria is in full-on exaggeration mode throughout who keeps on doing some nonsense. Karunakaran is so annoying with some crappy cuckold comedies.

Technicalities

Thankfully there are no songs in the movie. Background score is very basic, nothing fresh to offer for this old fashioned horror-comedy. Camera work is fairly decent, although the wide shots are pixelated. One of the very few good things of the film is its 2 hours runtime, but still the editor could have made it crisper by cutting out the lags. Such bad VFX quality spoiled the horror factor as the faces of the ghosts look so funny at most places.

Bottomline

The flashback is quite convincing, but both the horror and comedy fail to click due to lackluster writing from the director and exaggerated performances by the artists.

Katteri - Unreasonably Loud!

Rating - 2/ 5.