Movie Review - Geethanjali (Telugu) - More comedy, less horror!!

Mid-way through Geethanjali, I told myself there better be a good reason why I’m watching a film that’s failing repeatedly to offer what it has promised. So, this film dusts and tests the horror film template of a haunted house and a ghost, which has adorned the Indian cinema for ages. To that it adds a layer of comedy to make the proceedings not so serious and scary. 

Few films, in the recent past, such as Pizza have revisited a similar structure but there things worked because of jump-scares and the big ‘twist’ towards the end. If the twist appeases your cranial cells, you may deduce reasons why the rest of the film makes sense, and if it doesn’t, the entire film ends up being a bland assortment of scares.

The movie sparks off with the struggle of a wannabe director Srinu (Srinivas Reddy) to make it big in the tinsel town. Srinu finds a producer for his film and starts narrating a story of another struggling film-maker who gets swindled by two people. The characters in Srinu’s story move to a haunted apartment and trouble mongers them. Things have been manipulated cleverly to give the sense of a ghost lying there, although the comedy in this part overpowers the spine-chilling moments. There’s Anjali (Anjali) brought into the plot, who befriends Srinu for an ulterior motive. All the characters don a mysterious shade and what they are aiming for is brought to light after the interval.

The filmmakers use every horror trick from the textbook. They sprinkle many dots all around and try to connect them. Few get connected and few defy all the logic. The only thrill the audience may get is the wonderment when they come close to the pattern picked by the director to connect these dots. And once the crucial twist unfolds in the second half everything boils to a predictable Om Shanti Om kind of a climax. 

That being said, Geethanjali is watchable for two things – the comedy that pops up in bits and pieces and the impeccable camerawork that breathes life into the narrative. The frames, weird angles and lighting create an aura that’s reminiscent of an RGV film.

Geethanjali stays miles away from being a horror flick. It does not have its story in place and leaves lot of loose ends. I presume the writer and the director deliberately chose not to watch the other films made in this genre. So, if you have any preconceived ideas of how a horror-comedy shapes out to be, this one brings everything to life on screen. 

If you belong to a section of audience who willingly pay to get scared, this offers you nothing in the chills and thrills department. It’s a curious case of the writer’s inability to build a spooky setup on an intelligent premise. The film undoes what it starts with and marginally redeems towards the end. 

My Rating: Expectation - 6/10; Reality - 4/10

This review was originally written for Metro India newspaper.

An edited version of this piece can be found here.