Jatadhara film overview: Sudheer Babu, Sonakshi Sinhas mystical thriller is dated and amateurish

The blueprint for a lot of mystical thrillers — from Deviputhrudu to Karthikeya to the current Virupaksha— has stayed the identical. With time, a sceptic transforms right into a theist within the backdrop of a supernatural expertise. Jatadhara, directed by Venkat Kalyan and Abhishek Jaiswal, offers its protagonist, Shiva (Sudheer Babu), a funkier exterior — that of a ghost hunter who doesn’t imagine in ghosts.

Shiva works within the company sector by day along with his pal. When they don’t seem to be at their desks, they’re in pursuit of spirits at haunted homes. The movie opens with a sequence establishing Shiva’s psyche at a convention on paranormal actions. He is into ghost-hunting solely to show ghosts don’t exist. He believes worry is the beast that must be tamed, not the ghost.

Each time Shiva enters a brand new home, he retains asking the spirit for a sign of its presence, as if it had been his childhood pal. Expectedly, he falls for a god-fearing archaeologist, Sithara (Divya Khosla Kumar), who tries to change his perception system. He begins having unusual visions each evening. After a few shut shaves with demise, a revelation about his previous leads him to the contaminated village of Rudraram.

The story is tied to an intriguing backstory, pointing to lanke bindalu (wealth pots), the place folks guarded their wealth underground (from burglars and naysayers) utilizing a ritual. The evil drive Shiva must confront is a dhana pisachini (a demon of wealth). At one stage, the movie is a cautionary story in regards to the greed for materials wealth, inviting unwell luck to a household.

Everything that ought to have labored within the movie’s favour — components corresponding to ghost-hunting, the scientific mumbo-jumbo round spirits, the fable-like backstory on materialistic needs, all resulting in Shiva’s transformation — falls flat on its head. Revisiting a time-tested premise, there isn’t any conviction within the execution. An air of superficiality and indifference constantly envelops it.

The screenplay lacks any form of construction, making an attempt to hammer the identical level about Shiva’s philosophy again and again, main nowhere. The writing appears like an exaggerated discourse, glorifying dogmas and superstitions. The remedy is painfully generic, and the performances are uninspiring and rehearsed. There is not any authenticity to the setting in any respect.

The movie sinks deeper post-intermission, the place Shiva’s twisted household historical past involves the fore (the flashback simply doesn’t finish). There are lores round lemons, black magic rituals, sorcerers, rice vessels soaked in blood, animal sacrifices, and cannibalism. The staging is repulsive, and it appears like the administrators forgot to say ‘reduce’ between the photographs.

The least the makers might have carried out is to lend some emotional heft to the thread linking Shiva to his organic mother and father. The suddenness of his transformation is difficult to digest. The absence of composer is especially felt within the climax. The consecration of the Shiva idols and the tandavam later are too mechanical to depart any influence.

Sudheer Babu appears to be like misplaced and clueless because the movie progresses, and there’s hardly a strong efficiency to cowl floor or do some injury management. Divya Khosla Kumar’s prolonged look lacks meat and powerful context. The greatest disappointment of all is Sonakshi Sinha (in her Telugu debut), dressed as if she had been taking pictures for a jewelry endorsement, mouthing weird traces.

Shilpa Shirodkar’s comeback in Telugu cinema is equally disappointing. Rajeev Kanakala and Jhansi’s casting as Shiva’s mother and father is inept. Pradeep Rawat’s jarring hairdo and styling are a reason behind embarrassment. Subhalekha Sudhakar (because the religious guru Neelakantha Sastri) hams endlessly about myths and astrological predictions, sounding just like the promotional AVs out of a movie pre-release occasion.

The try to shoot the movie concurrently in Hindi and Telugu results in a number of lip-sync points. It is mounted and edited shabbily. The manufacturing design is extraordinarily minimalistic, and the costumes are misplaced. It pains to see that such a regressive story endorsing such primitive concepts and beliefs has discovered takers, even in 2025.

Before the protagonist Shiva finds solutions to his questions, the viewer is led to a different thriller in Jatadhara: what precisely had been they making an attempt to do?