Isha
is a Telugu horror film. When you look at the cast, apart from Hebah Patel and our own Pablu Prithviraj, who acted in Marmadesam and Ramani vs Ramani, all the other faces are unfamiliar. It's unfortunate that this film ended up becoming a meme, much like a Vadivelu comedy. What's even more surprising is that it has been celebrated and holds a 9+ rating on IMDb. Anyway, let's see how the film actually is.
According to the story, there are two girls and two boys who have been friends since their LKG days. One pair is already married. The other pair hasn't confessed their love yet. The boy is in love, but he hasn't told the girl. It's one sided. What these four do for a living, as I understood while watching, is expose fake saints who claim to exorcise ghosts and perform miracles to swindle money. It wasn't clearly shown that this is their profession, perhaps it was mentioned in the dialogues. But that heavy Telugu was beyond me. So let's leave that aside. After completing one such mission and exposing a swindler saint, they move on to the next mission. This entire first mission is extremely boring. I honestly felt it would have been better if they had just kept quiet instead of dragging those scenes. Only after that does the story enter the main plot. From the very first scene, everything shown is relevant to the story. It's just that it tests our patience as viewers.
The next mission involves Bablu Prithviraj, who plays a neurosurgeon. After shocking and disturbing CCTV footage of his wife's death was released, rumors spread that his experimental brain medicine trials on humans were exposed, and that he fled to America. But instead, he appears in an Osama bin Laden like getup, wearing a forehead mark, acting as a saint performing exorcisms in a hill village in Andhra Pradesh. When the four friends plan their mission using his photo, I assumed he would unleash some villainous performance like the antagonist in a recent Vijay Sethupathi film. But he isn't a villain. He has genuinely transformed into a saint. Though that was a small disappointment, and even though his getup felt slightly amusing, he performed the role very naturally. That part was good.
Now, while the four friends are driving to this hill village, a family traveling by bike to a wedding meets with an accident at an S bend. Both vehicles crash. In that family, the woman who was sitting on the pillion falls into a ditch, hits her head, and dies on the spot. Later, she appears as a ghost possessing a man's body. But she isn't the main ghost. There are many more ghosts. At times, it becomes so confusing that you can't tell who is a ghost and who is human. I genuinely felt like asking, What on earth is all this?
The ones shown clearly as ghosts are indeed ghosts. But among those shown as humans, some are not actually human. What we see in the film isn't even this world. It's another world altogether. Bablu tells the four of them that he will prove within three days whether ghosts exist or not, and asks them to stay in a house. While they are there, there are several jump scare scenes. But the four of them keep insisting that it's all tricks by this fake saint. Eventually, some among them even start believing that those tricks might actually be real.
But in the climax, whether ghosts exist or not, whether the four actually saw ghosts in that house,when Pablu and his disciples, who were waiting outside, enter the house, they discover that the ghosts are none other than these four themselves. That twist, which tries to elevate the film to some world cinema level, is something I simply cannot forgive!
is a Telugu horror film. When you look at the cast, apart from Hebah Patel and our own Pablu Prithviraj, who acted in Marmadesam and Ramani vs Ramani, all the other faces are unfamiliar. It's unfortunate that this film ended up becoming a meme, much like a Vadivelu comedy. What's even more surprising is that it has been celebrated and holds a 9+ rating on IMDb. Anyway, let's see how the film actually is.
According to the story, there are two girls and two boys who have been friends since their LKG days. One pair is already married. The other pair hasn't confessed their love yet. The boy is in love, but he hasn't told the girl. It's one sided. What these four do for a living, as I understood while watching, is expose fake saints who claim to exorcise ghosts and perform miracles to swindle money. It wasn't clearly shown that this is their profession, perhaps it was mentioned in the dialogues. But that heavy Telugu was beyond me. So let's leave that aside. After completing one such mission and exposing a swindler saint, they move on to the next mission. This entire first mission is extremely boring. I honestly felt it would have been better if they had just kept quiet instead of dragging those scenes. Only after that does the story enter the main plot. From the very first scene, everything shown is relevant to the story. It's just that it tests our patience as viewers.
The next mission involves Bablu Prithviraj, who plays a neurosurgeon. After shocking and disturbing CCTV footage of his wife's death was released, rumors spread that his experimental brain medicine trials on humans were exposed, and that he fled to America. But instead, he appears in an Osama bin Laden like getup, wearing a forehead mark, acting as a saint performing exorcisms in a hill village in Andhra Pradesh. When the four friends plan their mission using his photo, I assumed he would unleash some villainous performance like the antagonist in a recent Vijay Sethupathi film. But he isn't a villain. He has genuinely transformed into a saint. Though that was a small disappointment, and even though his getup felt slightly amusing, he performed the role very naturally. That part was good.
Now, while the four friends are driving to this hill village, a family traveling by bike to a wedding meets with an accident at an S bend. Both vehicles crash. In that family, the woman who was sitting on the pillion falls into a ditch, hits her head, and dies on the spot. Later, she appears as a ghost possessing a man's body. But she isn't the main ghost. There are many more ghosts. At times, it becomes so confusing that you can't tell who is a ghost and who is human. I genuinely felt like asking, What on earth is all this?
The ones shown clearly as ghosts are indeed ghosts. But among those shown as humans, some are not actually human. What we see in the film isn't even this world. It's another world altogether. Bablu tells the four of them that he will prove within three days whether ghosts exist or not, and asks them to stay in a house. While they are there, there are several jump scare scenes. But the four of them keep insisting that it's all tricks by this fake saint. Eventually, some among them even start believing that those tricks might actually be real.
But in the climax, whether ghosts exist or not, whether the four actually saw ghosts in that house,when Pablu and his disciples, who were waiting outside, enter the house, they discover that the ghosts are none other than these four themselves. That twist, which tries to elevate the film to some world cinema level, is something I simply cannot forgive!
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