"Aval" Tamil film review - Genuinely scary in parts, but ends up over-ambitious & noisy...

Official movie poster image source and credit:Wikipedia

I have mostly trusted Siddharth to pick up solid scripts and he doesn't disappoint, again. In fact, he produces this trilingual - Tamil, Telugu (titled Gruham) and Hindi (The House Next Door) along with Viacom18 Motion Pictures.

This supernatural tale is set in the beautiful Himalayas, and is about evil spirits inhabiting a house, trying to chase away the occupants, first targeting the teenage girl in the family.

Aval is a high-budget horror thriller. Trust the producers to come up with, "Based on a true story", in every other film - as a USP, especially in the horror genre, but this is not very convincing. Or maybe it was just an inspiration to get started following some supernatural occurrences with a common friend of the best friends (actor-director duo) that took them four years in writing the story.

The first half had 3-4 genuinely scary moments that sent more than just chills down my spine. :)

Anisha Angelina Victor as Jenny plays her part very well. She has so much of role, though, in the first half and then suddenly goes quiet post-intermission. The makers should have not made it that imbalanced.

Andrea Jeremiah is decent.

Siddharth is good, but we have seen better of him. His strength lies in his subtlety, and he appears unintentionally funny when histrionics are involved.

The sound design is more than good, the graphics are solid, without looking cheap anywhere, and the camerawork is stupendous. Full marks to the producers on these counts.

That makes me wonder - When they spend so much dough on movies, why can't they invest that little part on good sound dubbing, too? It seems off in some places, and is annoying when the actors have just the right expressions, but the dubbing is way off-track.

The ending scenes could have been subtler and the film does have flaws that could have been avoided with some really experienced direction. Also, it may have worked better if they had just made it in one language, instead of three. It would have also given the director Milind Rau a chance to focus on avoiding the cliches and keep the freshness going, like he did, with most of the first half.

Now that the sequel has been announced. I hope that the director improves his art from here and makes it even better.

And pray, why do they need to cast a non-Tamil speaker here, when there are so many good native actors around? I understand that it may have to do with cost-cutting - one film, three languages and all... Okay, on the contrary, since Atul Kulkarni enjoys working in Tamil films, isn't it time he put some effort learning the language? It would save him some bad sound-dubbing, and moreover compliment his usually top-notch emoting.

My verdict: 3 out of 5. Producers Siddharth and Viacom Pictures may have had some good intentions of bringing international horror levels to Tamil cinema but the end output is still lacking. What sets out as a decent start moves more towards The Exorcist meeting The Ring and The Conjuring series after the first 45 minutes.