Rating: ** ½
Jatadhara co-directed by Abhishek Jaiswal and Venkat Kalyan, moves in two directions. It wants to be eerie and airy at the same time. But it has neither the wherewithal nor the resources to be anything but a supernatural drama trapped in a zone of disembodied images in a game of groans.
The screenplay has the potential of being another Kantara, what with leading man Sudheer Babu giving his all to the climactic tandav, but sparing no thought to the rest of the plot which winds its way through a maze of ill-conceived tantric deifications that would leave you wondering which century we are really living in.Could all this really be happening in modernday cinema?
I mean, man has reached Mars. And we are still making films about bhoots and pischachinis? Sonakshi Sinha as a gold-greedy pichachini (you can call her a dayan or any witch way you want) is a hoot. She clatters her teeth as if they were erosion-proof. She makes mean faces, drinks blood(calorie free?) and throws her weight around so casually , it feels like the Goddesses have grown more corny than covetous.
One expected the climactic face-off between the Pishachini and the hero Shiva(so named as he is a ling bhakt, duh) to be far more gripping. But post the tandav, and prior to it, Sudheer Babu looks like he doesn’t really get it.
Neither do we. The plot seems to jump from one ill-written episode into another without bothering with any tenable link. The hero claims to be ghosthunter(not to be confused with a ghostbuster) but eventually settles down to being a ghost-dost after he meets his dead parents’ spirit in the most bizarre of circumstances.
The production looks patchy and compromised.
There is a lengthy pooja ceremony where a woman(greedy for gold), played by Shilpa Shirodkar(greedy for a comeback) and her husband call for a baby to be sacrificed. The baby is born while the perverse pooja is on. The presiding priest, confused by the fusion of scares and sniggers ends up finally slitting his own throat.
A question for those who actively indulge in the making of these currently in-favour supernatural tribute to the spirit of andh vishwas : are you aware of the curse of the evil spirit called blind faith? Jatadhara is neither scary not entertaining. It is a series of disembodied images angling for our attention. Yes, portions are reasonably engaging. But the endproduct seems to be beckoning evil spirits from the screenwriting universe rather than from the underworld where ghosts and other evil spectres are said to live.
Leave them alone.
