Villa - An interesting stay

By Bharath Vijayakumar

Movie franchise is a relatively new concept in Tamil cinema that seems to be catching up. Villa would not have probably had so much interest among the audience had it not been christened as aka Pizza 2. This huge advantage also comes along with unfair pressure due to obvious comparisons that are bound to be made with the original Pizza. The makers have already made it clear that this one has nothing to do with the earlier film. How does this Villa fair as a standalone product?

Plot:

A budding novelist Jebin (Ashok Selvan) has just lost his father(Nasser)and things do not look bright for him financially. He comes to know through his family lawyer that his father actually had purchased a Villa for him but had left it abandoned for unknown reasons. As we expect, things start to take a serious turn when Jebin visits the 'Villa'.

Cast:

Ashok Selvan comes up with a neat performance as a follow up to the impressive Soodhu Kavvum. He is shown as quite broody from the start of the film. We are not sure whether it is due his father's death or he is as such by nature. But this slightly hampers the feel that we are supposed to get when the unexpected start happening to him at the Villa as there is not a marked deviation in his behaviour. The rest of the cast including Sanchitha Shetty is adequate.

Technical Team:

As in the case of these type of films the technical team is the backbone of Villa. Santhosh Narayanan does justice with the songs and the bgm. The songs are extremely crisp and part of the narrative. The crisp running length of the movie (102 minutes) is a major advantage with not a single redundant scene. Editor Leo John Paul deserves due credit. Cinematographer Deepak Kumar Padhy too has done a neat job in capturing the events inside the villa with few scenes involving extensive use of CG.

What works and What does not?

Debutant Deepan deserves praise for delivering a product that stays true to it's genre from the beginning. There is no gimmick involved anywhere. Villa is more of a supernatural thriller that does not rely on spooking the daylights of you. There is not a single scary scene in the film. And if you are walking into the movie expecting to get spooked you are bound to be disappointed. This could either work for or against the film. Villa takes a certain time to warm up in the initial twenty minutes. Pizza too did exactly the same but Pizza had the luxury of surprising the audience as it was an unknown commodity. The second half of Villa is however packed with lot more incidents.Villa is certainly an interesting watch. It keeps you intrigued throughout but never actually gets you to the edge of the seat.

Bottomline:

A well made film from a young team. Go for it with absolutely no hangover from the Pizza.

Rating: