Jatadhara Review

Ill-made and regressive, Jatadhara feels like a jolt that you did not ask for, and leaves you wondering, "What did I just watch?" It makes you reminisce about the days when Tollywood dared to make true horror - from Raatri to Arundhathi - when chills came from craft, not confusion. Those days, sadly, are gone, with no revival in sight.

Shiva (Sudheer Babu) is a ghost hunter who does not believe in spirits. He hunts them only to prove they do not exist - that it is all just fear. But he is haunted by a recurring childhood nightmare tied to death and the supernatural.

While trying to debunk ghost stories, Shiva comes across a village rumoured to have treasure buried in golden urns. Everyone who searches for it dies, killed by a demoness named Dhan Pishachini (Sonakshi Sinha). Determined to uncover the truth, Shiva sets out to confront his nightmare and the demoness herself.

The movie begins, like most in its genre, with a bold disclaimer claiming it does not promote superstition. But within minutes, that claim collapses. The film dives headlong into glorifying extreme rituals - sacrifices, voodoo chants, possessions, spirit invocations - all wrapped in a strange sense of cultural pride. It builds a kind of India-centric grandiosity where everything Indian is hailed as divine truth. Shockingly, it even suggests that the Kerala floods were caused by a goddess' wrath and that human sacrifice can appease deities. There is no nuance, no afterthought, not even a reminder that these beliefs belong to the realm of myth, not morality or logic. The way the makers have treated pseudoscience and sorcery is scary and off-putting.

The idea of Dhan Pishachini seems borrowed from Tumbbad - except that there it was a male demon guarding boundless wealth. The concept is familiar across cultures: in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, a scholar trades his soul for power; in Tumbbad, greed becomes its own curse. But while Tumbbad was haunting, poetic and cathartic, Jatadhara is none of these. It borrows the idea but loses the soul - offering shock without substance and horror without thought.

Even if you gloss over the concept and content, the film is so dull that whenever a horror scene appears, you end up laughing instead of feeling scared - or perhaps crying over your misfortune for choosing to watch it in the first place. The film lacks genuine horror elements, decent VFX, or even a trace of thrill. It seems to have been either shot without a proper script or ruined during post-production. The overall execution is embarrassingly childish, and that becomes clear within the first five minutes itself: the makers have used an AI-generated video in the beginning - the kind you can easily create on any popular social media platform, without needing any niche AI app.

Performance-wise, the movie is mediocre. Some scenes remind you of the Ramsay Brothers' standards - tacky and ludicrous acting. Sudheer Babu gives it his all - his performance and screen presence are commendable - but he alone can't save the film. His co-star Divya Khosla delivers her lines so slowly that even a sloth would blush, and she overacts in every scene. She is there because she can be in any Zee Studio movie - she and her husband are major stakeholders.

Sonakshi Sinha, despite her potential, gets barely three dialogues - yet you'll remember her, if only for the countless times she bares her teeth in fury and tatters continuously. Your ears will keep echoing her relentless kit-kit-kit-kit... And from her facial expression, she almost breaks the fourth wall in an undesirable way - she gives away the fact that she knows she is part of a messy movie and is helpless in that moment.

By this point, it is evident the movie fails visually, too - and it doesn't fare any better aurally either. The songs are forgettable, and the background score is uneven and loud.

Even if you are a die-hard fan of South cinema, or of Sudheer or Sonakshi, this movie is nearly impossible to sit through.