Andhaghaaram (2020 Tamil film) ~ film review

Image source from Wikipedia

One of the best thing that Malaysians get is exposure to media and entertainment from so many different countries, and this is from free-to-air TV stations no less which is easily accessible by public. Unfortunately, this film will be one that is only available in select streaming platform (read: Netflix).

[Update] The film has been aired in one of the channel on ASTRO Malaysia (sorry I can't remember which channel), so the film is available on other platforms now.

Andhaghaaram is a 2020 Tamil supernatural/thriller film which is available on Nextflix starting 24 Nov. 2020. It starred Arjun Das, Vinoth Kishan, Pooja Ramachandran, Misha Goshal, Kumar Natarajan and Jeeva Ravi.

The film follows the story of three seemingly unrelated people; a blind and poor young man struggling to maintain the mansion that he inherited from his dead parents, a de-spirited cricket coach who felt guilty after his friend suffered an unknown mental disorder after receiving a book about occult from him as a gift, and a renowned psychiatrist who woke up from coma from the result of being shot by his own patient and found out that he had lost his entire family from the same attacker, as well as losing his medical license and his voice. These three stories which are told separately eventually intertwined to reveal the horrible connection between the characters involved.

To be honest, I kind of love this movie even though it has its flaws. The mystery that connects these three characters which are slowly unravel kept me engaged throughout the movie. It takes its time to tell the story which I guess contributed to its long runtime but I don't feel the pace is too slow; it works fine for the story that they are trying to tell here. The story is cleverly split to focus on each characters and while you can get confused at certain times, the dialogue and scenes sometimes will give you some hints here and there to make you think and try to figure things out on the connection.

You can tell the movie doesn't really have a huge budget with it's special effects when it comes to the horror or supernatural scenes but I love the fact that they find creative ways to still make the scenes interesting and not feel cheap. While I think the story flows well, I do have issue with the massive info dumps at the end of the movie, trying to explain and give reasons of why and how things are happening. I have no issue with the villain explaining his/her intention and revealing the truth to the characters but I was hoping some of the mysteries will be unveiled by the characters themselves instead of being explained to them by the villain. But I still enjoy the movie as a whole.

I am not familiar with any of the actors in this movie but I must say that the cast were great. Not just the main cast but I thought even the smallest supporting characters did a wonderful job, so it was great casting overall. I am most impressed however with Arjun Das who plays Vinod, the cricket coach. He gets to play a character who is not just guilt-ridden but paranoid as well and he makes the best that he can with his character, and it was joyful to watch. But I think the character that most people will love and empathize with is Selvam, the blind young man played by Vinoth Kishan. It's a great character and you can't help but root for him to succeed despite the obstacles of being blind and poor. Yes, I adore him as well.

As a conclusion, I think Andhaghaaram is still a good film to watch despite its flaws. It has slow pacing but not too slow that makes you lose interest. It makes you think and kept you engaged, and the cast were great as well. The film is already showing great potential for its director, V. Vignarajan, who wrote and directed this movie in his directorial debut. I'm looking forward to what he has to offer next.