Airaa

Nayanthara for the first time in her career plays a dual role. While one of the characters is a regular one for her, it is the second where she plays a de-glamorous part that stands out. 

Sarjun KM has a template horror story in hand. It is predictable when we look at it overall, but the director manages to infuse some tension into the narrative with thrilling bits centered around the stock sequences of the genre.

Music by Sundaramurthy KS is neat and perfectly in sync with the narrative. One song in the second half stands out which is used throughout.

The title credits of Airaa plays over an animated sequence that shows the domino effect caused by a Rube Goldbergian contraption. And the title itself contains butterflies. 

There’s an air of half-heartedness about Airaa. It wants to be a ghost movie, but it keeps trying to play down the horror elements. It wants to be a tragedy about an unfortunate character, but doesn’t want to become too melodramatic.

There are a couple of moments that are visually exciting – a shot where things in a room seem to be floating in zero gravity, and a niftily edited sequence that cross-cuts between the action happening in two places 

Undoubtedly, Nayanthara is the heart and soul of the film. She is superb in both her roles but is staggering in the de-glam role of Bhavani. The torture she goes through and how she faces curses all the time have been nicely showcased in the film. 

This film has minus point galore. Firstly, the twists in the film do not come for the entire first half. This makes the proceedings confusing and boring many times. The director should have added a twist in the interval point to make people understand what is happening in the film. 

On the whole, Airaa is slow and dragged out horror thriller which has only a selected few good scenes.