Aghathiyaa Review - Utterly Outdated!
Ashwin Ram
Aghathiyaa is a horror-drama starring Jiiva, Arjun and Raashi Khanna in the lead roles. The film is directed by Pa. Vijay, music is composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja and bankrolled by Vels Film International.
Premise:
Jiiva is a production designer, he invests his own money to create a film set and the project gets shelved. He gets a business idea out of it and converts the setup into a Scary House. Turns out there are real ghosts in the place and the backstory begins.
Writing/ Direction:
The core idea of the film is exciting, real ghosts exist in a scary house that operates for entertainment purposes. Haunted houses usually interest their consumers, but the establishment scene is poorly presented here with the attempts of scaring the audience becoming a complete misfire. The film carries a promising base story which is basically Ayurveda versus Allopathy, and Jiiva believes the herbal medicine found by Arjun in the 1940s is the cure for his mother’s bone cancer. But the way these are summed in the script and brought to screen is outright pathetic. Every dialogue recited is monotonous, even the educated characters in the movie sound absurd by not making any sense. The backstory is extremely long, not even the basics are set right, Arjun’s name in the movie is Siddharthan just because he is a specialist in ‘Siddha Vaithiyam’, such lazy writing. Not even a single good scene in the entire movie, every moment is either boring or cringe. The comedy scenes are irritating and the serious portions land in a funny manner, especially Arjun dealing with an elephant and Jiiva’s twist being a freedom fighter in his previous birth evoke uncontrollable laughter. The direction is a literal example of being old-school, it seems like there is absolutely nothing in terms of a filmmaker’s vision. Careless work to the core, there are lip sync issues throughout the film.
Performances:
Jiiva and Arjun looked fit on-screen, and Raashi Khanna looked pretty. No other credits can be given as director Pa.Vijay has miserably failed to extract even decent performances from these proven talents. An ensemble cast of Yogi Babu, VTV Ganesh, Sha Ra, Redin Kingsley, Radha Ravi, Charlie, etc go to waste. Not even a single character is written or presented well. Pity for Rohini to have such a bizarre presence, the height of exaggeration in terms of acting and character portrayal.
Technicalities:
Like the film, Yuvan Shankar Raja’s music has no redeeming qualities too. Songs are extremely dull, it becomes worse when he decides to reprise ‘En Iniya Pon Nilave’ which is one of his father Ilayaraja’s masterpieces. The film is travelling on one side and the background score is heading in the opposite direction, zero coherency. Not just the excessive number of tacky green mat shots that pave way for the crappy visuals, the valuable mocobot camera is ridiculed by atrociously using it just for namesake. Low-grade VFX work in all areas except an animation stretch at the end which was very well executed, we could only wish the whole movie was presented in the same quality. Abrupt cut points, certain scene orders look like they were separately stitched and attached.
Bottomline
The two plots that drive the story are more than efficient to deliver a decent horror drama. But it crashes instantly as an intolerable flick with notorious screenplay, artificial performances, pointless dialogues and what not.
Rating - 1.5/ 5