Aa Intlo Review

For a true horror film aficionado, the difference between watching an innovative horror film and a cliched horror film is the same as that between eating a new dish he's loving and a standard dish he always loves. Aa Intlo is made precisely for that kind of viewer - it has lesser thought than goes into realizing it's crap, but if it's the thrills you are looking for, it delivers them, even if they're not even in a change of clothing.

Much like an abridged XXX video, Aa Intlo is so shameless in getting to the point, the first 2 horror scenes, which kick off the movie and are rendered back-to-back, are just dreams of the protoganist, with nothing to do with the script or even explained in rest of the movie. Director Chinna, known best for his role in RGV debut Shiva, lifts the worst ideas from the latter's hype-over-substance Phoonk, in showcasing a horror sequence as a nightmare since he is too creatively challenged to be able to integrate it into the story.

The rest of the movie is no better - every cliché is there. Hands springing out of bath tubs, an eerie-looking watchman and maid, a lunatic sadhu, and heaps of red herrings and unexplained scenes (like the kid squeezing the throat of his younger sister). Everything feels like you've seen it somewhere - mostly Bhoot, Darling and Phoonk - and the climax is a straight lift from the contemporary horror classic 1920. And if you are trying to sit and put everything together in the end, you need imagination, luck, and a life.

So Pavan (Chinna) is living with his wife Pallavi (Mayuri) and 2 kids in a house he's newly shifted into, when some unnatural things start happening. The tulasi plant keeps dying, his wife gets spooked by a tempestuous sadhu blowing his conch, and a priest is found dead in their courtyard, and more. His wife is also constantly yearning for sex and he's keeping her away, and she's getting wild at this uncharacteristic refusal.

Pavan does not believe in God or ghosts, and when his friend (Vinod Kumar) suggests that they see an astrologer, he complies very reluctantly. And it does nothing for his faith in astrologers when the man (Kota Srinivasa Rao) makes a stunning observation after seeing Pallavi's horoscope - that she's been dead a long while. He's wild, but the astologer is adamant.

With a script completely lacking in integrity, Aa Intlo is more a compilation of thrills than a coherent narration of a story. Rubbing salt into your wounds is a completely out-of-shape Chinna choosing to play protoganist himself - a character who has damsels falling crazily in love with him. Plus, there's a duet, too, featuring a lip-lock between him and Mayuri. Chinna was never the most expressive or energetic of actors, and it does nothing for a poorly conceptualized film that he is its face.

Mayuri is okay, but her acting is overshadowed by the sad writing. In fact, the fact that an accomplished actor like Kota is made to look bad - the way he laughs meaninglessly for a long while before pronouncing that Pallavi died long back comes to mind - speaks volumes of the writing (the story, screenplay, dialogue credits go to Chinna).

Luckily the film has just about 2-3 songs, and even more luckily they don't do any lasting damage. The visuals are fairly okay, though it's certainly no 1920 or Arundhati. On the whole, like we said, this one is good for an evening of thrills, as long as you are okay with not showing much class.