Airaa

Airaa is one film which has been in the news for Nayanthara’s de-glam look. The film has simultaneously released in Tamil and Telugu today and let’s see how it turns out to be. Story : Aira(Nayanthara) is a media baron who runs away to her native village to escape her marriage proposals. There, she starts experiencing weird activities in her home. Seeing this, she makes videos of them and becomes a YouTube sensation. But to her bad luck, things become serious as one of her family members dies in a spooky incident. Who is behind all these incidents? What do they have to do with Airaa? Where does the de-glam Nayan feature in this setup?. To know the answers, you need to watch the film on the big screen. Plus Points : 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. Nayan leads from the front and is drastically different in both the characters and carries the film on her shoulders. The second half of the film is where the actual action happens. All the twists of the film are revealed slowly and make some sense. There is another parallel story which runs in the film and this has also been narrated well. Kalaiyarasan, who is featured in this part is good an emotional husband who loses his wife. Minus Points : 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. Instead, he shows the parallel stories in a boring manner. The pace of the film is dead slow and this is where the film goes for a toss. The makers take so much time that you feel like going to sleep in certain scenes. Even after the twists in the flashback are cleared, the director adds so much of unnecessary drama that will irritate you completely. Upon this, the climax is so weird that it is hard to believe at once and is not convincing at all. The second half which needed to be crisp is tedious as same old emotional drama is shown again and again. Technical Aspects : Production values of the film are pretty good as the spooky elements have been showcased well. Special mention should go to the BGM by Sundar Ramurthy which elevates the film nicely. Dubbing is decent and so was the whole production design. Coming to the director Sarjun, he has done a disappointing job with the film. His story selection is weak and just to give Nayan both good roles, he has forgotten the narration which goes for a toss. The film is told in a slow manner which gets boring by the end with a silly climax. Verdict : On the whole, Airaa is slow and dragged out horror thriller which has only a selected few good scenes. Nayanthara leads from the front and gives a superb performance. But even her star power cannot save the film as the narration is old school and takes the film down many a time. All those who want to see what Nayan is up to in a de-glam role can give this film a shot but there is nothing exciting or thrilling that this film showcases for the audience.

Airaa Movie Synopsis: A young woman, who goes to her grandmother’s home in Pollachi, realises the presence of something supernatural in the place. Meanwhile, mysterious murders are happening in Chennai. How are these seemingly unrelated events connected? Airaa Movie Review: 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. These are the clues that director Sarjun offers us, right at the beginning of his film, to the mystery that is at the centre of his film’s narrative. When the film begins, we see a couple of cops in Pollachi answering a distress call only to find out that the house they are in is haunted. The action then shifts to Chennai, to Yamuna (Nayanthara), a media professional, who has to put up with a misogynistic NRI, whom her parents are trying to set her up with, and a boss who is unsympathetic towards her boredom at writing an Agony Aunt column. She moves to Pollachi, to the very haunted house that we were shown in the beginning. The house is occupied by her grandmother (Kulappully Leela) and her help, Mani (Yogi Babu). Soon, eerie events start happening — creaking doors, rocking chairs, shadowy figures and the works, which fans of the horror genre are only too familiar with. Meanwhile, in Chennai, Amudhan (Kalaiyarasan, solid), who has lost his beloved Bhavani (Nayanthara, darker and better) to a road accident, realises that the seemingly unrelated deaths happening around him could actually be connected to the dead woman. How do these two storylines intersect? 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. It wants to be a film with a superstar, but cannot decide if it wants to showcase the star or the actor. It tries to play around with the Butterfly Effect concept to make the revenge angle — a staple of horror films — seem unique, but unfortunately, this attempt backfires. One of the main problems with the film is that Yamuna is an uninteresting character with no endearing trait to make us fear for her safety. Yes, she is bold (in an early scene, we see her putting down a man who tries to slut-shame her), but that doesn’t feel enough. In fact, Nayanthara seems jaded here. The characters around Yamuna are also dull. You only have to see the way Yogi Babu’s character is treated to understand this. Given how terrific the Nayanthara-Yogi Babu combination was in Kolamaavu Kokila, it is all the more tragic. And the writers (Sarjun and Priyanka) choose to give us the all-important flashback — Bhavani’s backstory — only in the second half. Bhavani is certainly an empathetic character, but then, when we get to know why she is after Yamuna, it feels anti-climactic and more importantly, unfair. To make things worse, the character’s absurd demand in the end only robs away the goodwill. There are a couple of moments that are visually exciting — a shot where things float in zero gravity; and a niftily edited sequence that cross-cuts between the action happening in two places. KS Sundaramurthy commendably tries to salvage the film with his background score. Also, the film’s attempt to highlight our society’s attitudes towards girls — the expectations, the superstitions and the obsession over fair skin deserves praise. But these aren’t enough.