Review Overview
Performances
Screenplay & Direction
Technical Aspects & BGM
Barely terrifying!
Touted to be a horror anthology film, Aaaah, which consists of five different stories that culminate in a predictable climax, offers few modest hair-raising moments laced with contrived humor lines and an unstimulating narration.
Cast: Gokulnath, Meghna, Bala Saravanan, Bobby Simha, M. S. Bhaskar, Bosskey, P. S. Srijith, Takehiro Shiraga, Gaana Bala (Special Appearance)
Cinematography: G Sathish
Music: K. Venkat Prabhu Shankar, C. S. Sam
Editing: Hari Shankar
PRO: Suresh Chandra
Direction: Hari Shankar & Hareesh Narayan
Produced by: V. Loganathan, V. Janarthanan, Srinivas Loganathan
Banner: KTVR Creative Frames & Shankar Bros
Release Date: 28-11-2014
Run Time: 02:18:00
Touted to be a horror anthology film, Aaaah, which consists of five different stories that culminate in a predictable climax, offers few modest hair-raising moments laced with contrived humor lines and an unstimulating narration.The film provides less terrifying moments and more moments of impatience resulting from cliched horror scenes where bangs and shrieks look evidently formulated.
Director duo Hari and Haresh have taken a simple premise. Three friends – Gokulnath, Meghna and Bala Saravanan embark on a journey to prove the existence of ghosts to Bobby Simha to win a bet. And, the bet money (Half of the assets of Simha which amounts to crores of money) is absolutely worth it, they feel. They research about the existence of ghosts in papers and online. Whenever they stumble upon something worthy, they decide to give it a shot.
That’s how they confront five different paranormal encounters in five different lands – a hospital in Japan, a dessert in Dubai, a desolated highway in Andhra Pradesh, in the middle of the Bay of Bengal and in an ATM kiosk in a village in Tamil Nadu. What’s more worrying is even with five different stories set in five different landscapes, Aaaah fails to offer a genuinely fearsome thriller. The over-reliability of sounds to provoke spookiness results in an underwhelming horror tale with some tamely-constructed eerie moments.
The limited supporting cast, with few well-known names like Bobby Simha, MS Bhaskar and Bosskey, has worked well in the film’s favor. Everyone has done justice to their roles except Meghna, who emotes like she is hamming it up. Bala Saravanan’s impassionately tiresome one-liners add to the worry.
Sam’s background score deserves mention and so does Sathish’s cinematography which has captured different cultures in different terrains convincingly. Aaaah definitely has a bigger scope to put up a grandly spooky show but is letdown by a poor writing.