House Mates film evaluate: Fun, breezy fantasy horror-comedy loses steam

Amidst all of the big-ticket entries, it’s all the time refreshing to see little nuggets of sincere cinema, just like the #Sivakarthikeyan-produced House Mates. It’s removed from excellent, however with only a seed of an concept and a succesful ensemble of actors, director Rajavel manages to tug you into his humble world of horror-fantasy for a taut 129 minutes. From the design of the title card and intro credit, to the rest-easy staging and composed indoor pictures, all the pieces displays an intent to steer clear of ostentation.

The scares, in a completely participating first act that units the tone, are modest but honest. In reality, all through the primary half, it’s these scares that preserve us hooked. It’s bewitching when horror movies present how on a regular basis mundane actions, like a faucet working or a tv switching channels by itself, can deliver simply as many goosebumps as a CGI monster. This is why you perceive Anu (the ever-impressive #Aarsha Chandini Baiju shines in her Tamil debut) when she struggles to persuade her husband Karthik (Darshan’s efficiency is tough across the edges) to consider that there’s one thing unusual lurking of their new house (I imply, even we wouldn’t leap the gun to exorcise a water faucet!). You additionally perceive Karthik’s scepticism: as a younger engineer who works to the bone, he’s at a pivotal level in his profession, and this home was meant to be the muse for all that lies forward. With his household not within the image, he yearned to have a household of his personal, and so, he shelled out Rs. 45 lakhs to purchase this flat to persuade Anu’s father to approve of their relationship.

In the start, it’s all easy: Anu sees eerie occurrences occur round the home, however Karthik shuns them as mere coincidences. The narrative additionally intercuts sparsely to point out comparable occasions scaring a baby (Master Kendrick) at one other home, to the dismay of his dad and mom, Ramesh and Viji (#Kaali Venkat and #Vinodhini Vaidyanathan deliver all of the laughter). For a superb chunk, the movie permits you to stay up for only one factor in every of those parallel arcs — when and the way will Karthik and Ramesh study that there’s one thing irregular in regards to the occasions occurring of their residences?

Firstly, Rajavel deserves credit score for not overselling a few of these beats — particularly in how he handles Karthik and Anu’s relationship — and for the subtler subversions, just like the one regarding Karthik’s work life. We see how careworn he’s at his work, having landed a venture that may make or break his profession. One naturally expects such a state of affairs to create friction along with his spouse, who, from his perspective, is “making a scene out of nothing.” But apparently, that doesn’t occur right here, and Rajavel connects this thread later in a fashion you wouldn’t see coming.

An avid movie viewer would suspect the movie to be greater than the threadbare, low-key affair that it permits you to assume, however then, the grand reveal does seal the deal. It’s a style shift the promos had cleverly hid. The lives of Karthik, Anu, Ramesh, Viji and the kid intertwine supernaturally, and this reveal opens up a plethora of potentialities. Sadly, all the pieces goes downhill for House Mates thereafter. You are left scratching your head as to why Karthik, a talented engineer, can not work out the ropes to the brand new guidelines set in his house and even carry a pop-culture-level understanding of how this phenomenon works, and desires his nerdy colleague, Senior (Abdool Lee), to reveal some fundamental ideas to Karthik and the viewers.

Yes, the characters must serve the plot, however couldn’t they cowl a number of the many issues a layperson would consider whereas experiencing such unreal phenomena? You ponder the potential of what might have been had these two middle-class households used this incidence and the information at their disposal to their profit, earlier than tying as much as the climax. But Rajavel insists on caricaturing these characters for gags or to create drama. Except for a comedic bit that includes the Run tune ‘Minsaram En Meedhu,’ humour dries out, and you want the moments of friction between the household had been extra innovatively written. Nothing stands out till we get to a climax that ties all of it collectively considerably satisfactorily.

Nevertheless, House Mates is a modest win for Rajavel and producer #Sivakarthikeyan, because it reasserts with conviction that generally essentially the most unassuming of concepts, easy however elegantly informed, could make for a superb watch. It needn’t be a Conjuring or a Coherence. You could make a reliable movie from a kind of elevator pitches shared amongst housemates.

House Mates releases in theatres on Friday, August 1