Once again we have yet another remake in Tamil Cinema. This time round its been inspired for the Bollywood blockbuster “Boot”. The repackaged version for the Kollywood audience is called “Shock”. And it has been quite some time since the Tamil going audience has had a ghost story to watch.
The basic story of shock for all those who haven’t seen Boot is as follows. Vasanth played by Prashanth and his wife Malini played by Meena move to a twelve-story apartment. The love birds settle into their new flat and everything is well basicaly going fine. However not before long things being to appear different as Malini senses the presence of ‘someone else’ in the flat. And just so that you know like all horror flicks even this flat has a grosum history. Apparently the story goes, Manju the previous tenant had fall out from the balcony in a mysterious way obviously dieing. The plot thickens when you will learn that Manju’s young daughter also met with a similar fate. Interesting right?
The story gallops on with Malini having the honor of being possessed by Manju’s spirit, which sets out on a murderous spree avenging all those who had a hand in her death and her daughter’s.
Prashanth has done a very serious role in this movie. It is quite different from the portrayals one is used to seeing him perform. He has handled the role of Vasanth with maturity and ease. The caring, loving husband who is extremely distressed at his wife’s condition is very convincingly preformed.
Meena has also done a fine job playing her character Malini who is possesse by Manju. The scenes were she looks petrified when she realizes the home is haunted, and the scenes were she is unsure of herself has been dramatized well. Meena’s performance in the scene where she becomes menacing when possessed is giving enough celluloid to shine her performance through convincingly.
Thiyagarajan (The Director) plays the snooping cop, which was played by ‘Nana Patekar’ in the original Hindi version. Even though Thiyagarajan lends a touch of humor, the performance can’t be compared with the brilliance of ‘Nana Patekar’ and he is thoroughly missed.
Another black mark in the movie is the role of the servant (Kalarani). Now this character was defiantly made to scare the audience, however she ends up looking comical and irritating. This gives a break to the build up in the horror scenes, which frankally doesn’t help the movie. As Shock is a horror flick fatal mistakes like this could be devastating to the movies scare factor making it loose its essence. However director Thiyagarajan has to be congratulated for not hampering the tempo with the usual frills of song and dance routines.
‘Sai Suresh’s’ crisp editing is another elevating factor. “Shock” safely sticks to the original “Bhoot” all the way. The Music by Salim Sulaiman yelled with the film, it was meant to scare you and it really really did, keeping well with the peace of the edit. What would have given another plus point to the technical element of the film was if, Cinematographer M.V. Pannneer Selvam’s work would have not been so predictable. One could clearly make out where the even the light source was coming from and it was not unfortunately a great piece of camera work.
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