Mantra starring Charmme and Sivaji is a sporadically interesting but mostly interminable horror flick revolving around a haunted house, a locked room,and some inexplicable deaths. While the visuals are undoubtedly a highlight, the director does a superb job of ensuring that Charmme or the demon never quite scare you.
There are hardly any chilling moments or inclusion of seriously gory sequences except for the heroine attempting to pull out the knife that has been pierced into her thigh. Infact there is no explanation as to how she manages to remain conscious with such an injury and how the bleeding stops with a thin strip of bandage.
Sivaji who failed to make an impact in the film that released last friday plays the real State Rowdy and does his act with panache. The film is about Charmme (Mantra) who wants to sell her haunted house to repay her father’s debts. The filmmaker tries to do something creative here and the entertainment ends with Sivaji’s dialogues pre-interval.
Mantra is by and large dominated by the uninteresting shenanigans of several wholly uninteresting characters and the usually silly vibe only worsens as the movie progresses. There is a seductive song but that certainly doesn’t help matters, it looks like soft-porn and the curiosity levels are heightened towards the end only to be dropped like a hot potato.
It is Sivaji all the way and the obscenely flabby Charmme struts around with pierced ears and skimpy clothes and the disproportionate looks in different scenes doesn’t gel even as she tries to pack a fairly substantial emotional punch, and there’s little doubt that the movie deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible.
The director should have done his homework well to convince the audience of the climax even if he had to show a bi-polar disorder instead of demon. Tulasiram’s perfunctory work doesn’t do the film any favour and the audience. It just keeps you wondering why telugu film directors don’t conjure up any scary moments any more in horror films.