Chance gone abegging

Title : Karthikeya
Cast : Nikhil and Swathi
Direction : Chandu Mondeti
Genre : Drama
Rating : **1/2
Like : Nikhil
UnLike : Predictable and indecisive

Well intentioned. The virtues could well end there, though. Our filmmakers find it convenient to borrow heavily from an aggregate available templates or stated scenarios from the archives for their renewed outings. Back in school the right to memorise and reproduce with accuracy is recognised and awarded. This is born and encouraged a culture that worships repetition and scoffs creativity. It is strongly believed that it is necessary to lull the viewer into a conditioned mindset. Ghost films resultantly suffer niche rhetoric: such as creaking windows, wild winds blowing, dark nights, loud background score and shrieks aplenty. Even a four-year-old is now conditioned thanks to the TV exposure to Hollywood that all this is make believe and has outgrown the mindset. This information has, however, not reached the creative filmmaker’s doorstep. Yet another clichéd fad is to take the snake and weave a tale of vengeance around it and exhaust its venom over creepy reels.

Chandu Mondeti does exactly this. He decides to play safe in the defined area of his creativity. He weaves a tale around Lord Subramanya and a haunted temple, a hypnotised poisonous snake and the cause celebre of deaths caused due to the snake bites at Subramanyapuram. Trainee medico Karthik (Nikhil) with friends (include Praveen) and the dentist wing headed by Devi (Swati Reddy) arrive at the village. Two tales are up for viewing: one the listless romance between Karthik and Devi and the other the snake on the killing spree. A journalist and an employee of the Endowments Department are the early victims of the snake on a prowl. The victims are the curious guys who find something amiss and are out to unravel the mystery. Karthik is adventurous and the hero of the tale, with suggestive circumstances that he is destined to break the spell and spill the truth.

It would be playing spoilsport to tell further. It must be said in favour of the filmmaker that he at least has a story worth telling. His problem is his control over the script and his failure for detail. The tale constantly oscillates between the love story and the snake saga. They are independent tales that do not mix except that the gals dad (Tanikella Bharani) is the village priest with an interest in the temple where the deaths occur. Science and occult, philosophy and adventure, romance and wooing are all there in parts in the film. It is the failure to maintain a proper balance of the varied spices that makes the end product a tad disorganised and lacking in direction.

It is yet another case of opportunity lost at the threshold and a film that fails to engage you beyond a point for sheer lack of will and enough home work. The screen space occupied by Nikhil and Swati is a damp squib. Nikhil, however, does his very best to keep up the spirit of the narration. He has good company in Praveen who does not go over board and adds a subtle dimension to the film with his sense of comic timing. If you have an appetite for snake bites and crawling reptiles with over active fangs this film could interest you.