Karakkam Movie Review: High on Concept, Low on Spook-and-Spoof Balance

— Surya Prakash Josyula

Rating: 2.5

Dhanush (Sreenath Bhasi) and Khaja (Praveen), who are like brand ambassadors for uselessness, are good friends. Ambika Lodge is their address. On a New Year’s night, they party heavily with friends in the same lodge. But once the intoxication gets to their heads, that party turns into a big fight. To escape from that fight, both of them go to a nearby old cemetery. They sleep there. After a while, when the intoxication reduces a bit, they decide to leave for their homes.

Just then, they see five graves there and the brass crosses shining on them. Here, our heroes’ brains work like mercury. They get an amazing idea: “If we sell these in scrap, we will get a lot of money!” That’s it, without thinking for half a second, they forcefully pull those crosses and put them in their pockets. In that rush, Dhanush drops his room key there.

The next day, they go to Varghese, who does scrap business, to sell those crosses and make money. But, exactly at that same time, Varghese dies suddenly. With that, not knowing what to do, they keep those crosses with themselves. When they go back to the cemetery for the lost ‘key’, their hearts almost sink seeing the police there.

While silently escaping, the Father there says a terrifying truth. “The souls of these five people will not leave those who stole the crosses from these graves. They will make them mad and kill them.” Hearing those words, a shiver starts in the spines of Dhanush and Khaja.

By the time they think of taking it lightly as ‘we have heard many such things’, those ghosts actually start appearing to them. What happened then? How does the parapsychologist ‘Nakul’ enter this story? In the end, what did those ghosts do to them? Did they escape from the clutches of those ghosts? To know which turn this story took at last, you have to watch the movie.

Analysis

Horror-comedy is a dangerous genre, it must be dealt with very carefully. Because… if you make people laugh in horror, the fear goes away. If you frighten them, the comedy dies. For both to work at the same time, the writer has to balance like a tightrope walker. In Karakkam, this balance did not work out fully. When the ghosts come, there is no fear to the extent one should feel scared. When comedy happens, there is no situation to laugh heartily.

But why do we watch the movie till the end? This is the magic in such stories. Even if this movie does not scare us or make us laugh fully, it creates curiosity. The writer asks a question and does not answer it immediately. Who are those five ghosts chasing the two heroes? Why did they die? What should be done for them to stop chasing them? These questions are the engine of the movie.

Even if the first half setup of this movie starts slowly and feels so-so, the second half feels better. However, the climax did not click to the expected level. The director played a safe game. After running the whole movie with a new concept, in the end, he came back to the revenge flashback we have seen a hundred times. As audience, we wait thinking, “Maybe there will be some other twist…” But we get the answer we already know. That is why, after completing the movie, it feels “good…”, but it does not feel “Wow!”.

Can we watch?

We can watch… but by lowering expectations. If you watch wanting to be terrified or to laugh heartily, there is a chance of being a bit disappointed.

Final Thought

While watching this movie, it feels as if the writers thought of the idea but made the ghosts (Ghost writers) write the movie. Because a movie is not just an idea. It is the method of telling that idea with a sharp screenplay that makes the audience sit for two hours. It fumbles a bit there.

Where to watch

It is there in Telugu on ‘Sony LIV’.