Kattuviriyan.

Starring: Ram, Malavika, Alex

Direction: Kalaipuli Sekaran

Music: G.Sekhar

Production: Mathu.K
 
Horror is not often explored in Kollywood, but of late there have been a few who have shown courage to venture into the genre of fear. Such attempts certainly draw some attention but ultimately it is to the quality of the movie itself that brings in the crowds. Kaattuviriyan is the latest Kollywood horror/thriller experiment and deserves mention for being one among the rare attempts at exploiting the ‘fear factor’ in Tamil cinema. Sivi was the last successful one to do so.
 
Kaattuviriyan is full of mystery and drama surrounding a bungalow and the spirits that supposedly haunt the place. The story revolves around a man (played by Dr. Raj) who grows up believing that women cannot be trusted, all due to his experiences of a troubled childhood after his parents’ failed marriage and his father’s suicide. The incident creates a deep wound in his mind and he suspects every woman he comes across to have a questionable character. This leads to him walking out of his marriage that was fixed with Malavika, who plays a double role for the first time in her career in this movie. Years later, they happen to meet each other and share their experiences in life. Malavika is now a Deputy Commissioner in the police force, and has a daughter (Malavika again) while Raj has become the Chief Secretary. Malavika wants to get to know Raj’s family well and during her visit along with her daughter to Raj’s house happens to see certain very disturbing and then highly confusing sights. She smells a rat and says so to Raj who    
 
blames all the bad occurrences on a ghost that supposedly haunts a bungalow that they lived in and how that ghost still continued to haunt that place terrifying people in its vicinity at very particular times every day. Being a police officer, Malavika is not fully convinced and wants to get to the bottom of the matter. She just about begins to get her teeth into the matter when the evil powers at work bring about her death after a rather fearsome encounter with ghostly creatures.

Now, it is left to Malavika, the daughter to find out the truth. Now enters another character claiming to be the lover of Raj’s daughter. His revelations make matters far more complicated and confusing. The matter is thrown wide open and the jigsaw becomes harder to piece together. They discover the death of far more people than they had even thought of and trace it all down to the haunted bungalow. How they get to the bottom of what or who haunts the big house forms an interesting climax. 
 

   Well, a movie like this rides entirely on the tightness of the script and the director’s abilities to keep us on a knife’s edge. The script and the story are sadly a let down. For a plot that looks interesting from the outset, the script ought to have been better. However, the movie has some positives, the main element being the director’s handling of certain scenes that were aimed at raising our heart rates. The director has been successful in evoking fear wherever he has intended to and the element of suspense too has been maintained. The graphics and special effects must come in for special mention here, especially in the scenes where Raj narrates the haunting in the house, the faces and figures shown during these episodes send chills down the spine.

That almost sums up a movie that could have been much better. All factors except the horror element are pretty mediocre. Director T.Shekaran and King Kong try their hand at some comedy but do not pull it off effectively. Art by Sundarajan and sound effects, very important in horror films, have been well taken care of.
 
 
Music doesn’t hold a place of prominence and the score provided by director T. Shekharan again has nothing special. T. Shekharan seems to be another T. Rajendar, handling story, screenplay, dialogues, direction, music and lyrics himself. Hats off to his versatility but one feels he would have been better off leaving the music and lyrics to specialists and paying more attention to the script, which is where the movie suffers.

On the business front, the movie might draw crowds in the B and C centers owing to its pretty strong horror content. However, the basic story is pretty unsuitable for family viewing. Kaattuviriyan does evoke memories of some yesteryear Tamil thrillers- we leave you to do guess which ones. Also, the title (which refers to the mythical snake with photographic memory and an unfailing thirst for revenge) is a bit misleading.