Aaviri Review: Insipid and boring

'Aaviri' is this Friday's Dil Raju presentation. Written and directed by Ravi Babu, the film is a horror-thriller. Here we tell you what works and what doesn't in the film.

Story:

Right in the opening scenes, the elder daughter of Raj (Ravi Babu) and Leena (Neha Chauhan) dies due to asthma. The incident leaves the couple shocked but it is their younger daughter Munni (Baby Sri Muktha) who seems to be in real trouble.

An unseen ghost keeps visiting Munni every day, asking her to abandon her house and run away somewhere. The child makes repeated attempts to stage an escape but fails. There does come a point when Munni goes missing, leaving her parents traumatized. But this is when the plot thickens. 

What is the mystery? How is it resolved? Answers are found in the second half.

Analysis

Ravi Babu’s 'Aaviri' reminded me of 'Avunu-2' in two respects. The first one is a minor complaint. Like in 'Avunu-2', the audience is given a tour of the bungalow in which the hero-heroine duo does the same things almost repeatedly. We are expected to be wowed by the state-of-art equipment and technology and the art direction.

But the second complaint is a major one. 'Aaviri' comes with the kind of dull narration that 'Avunu-2' can be accused of. This is even duller and insipid. 

It's very common for characters to behave unrealistically in horror movies. For example, even when a dear one helplessly screams that he or she is seeing a ghost, the other family members don't believe it! In 'Aaviri', Ravi Babu takes it to the next level. The little daughter who never learned driving is seen riding a scooter in a hands-free, miraculous way but her mother doesn't show shock! A pizza parcel plays hide and seek with the delivery agent, who doesn't talk about this unusual occurrence!

Forget such one-time incidents. The father has placed a hundred CCTV cameras in the house. There is ample scope for him to check what is going wrong in the house. But he never does it. When some other character checks the footage and finds out that mysterious things have been taking place in the house, Ravi Babu's character shows shock. Why on earth didn't he use the footage previously?

There is a Professor who specializes in occult practices. In one scene, he behaves like a cigar-smoking don. In another scene, his body language is of a Tantrik. In yet another scene, he is stiff as a cold cop.

A babysitter (played by Himaja Reddy) is witness to a miracle in front of her eyes but even this doesn't alert the parents to the presence of a mysterious being in the home. When the writer has decided to keep stretching things till the interval, nothing can convince a character about reality. 75 percent of the movie dwells on scenes that we have seen in umpteen movies. All the scares are stock tricks. When the real twist comes, it turns even more damp squib. If you have seen Ravi Babu’s earlier movies, you can easily guess the twist and who the villain is.

The performances are inconsistent. Ravi Babu acts with a single expression. Neha Chauhan doesn't show the right kind of expressions in the crucial scenes. Baby Sri Muktha is an exception, for she is spot on.

The technical departments don't give anything to write home about. The limited space in which the story unfolds will make you suffocated.

Verdict:

'Aaviri' is insipid and boring. It takes up a small idea and prolongs it into a 112-minute film with not a single thrilling element.