Odela 2 Review

Odela Railway Station was a realistic crime thriller released in 2022. It stood out that year for its crisp 90-minute runtime. Sleek and successful, it even teased a sequel - Odela 2. And now we have it. But here's the thing: this sequel is a supernatural horror thriller, and it's much longer - around 150 minutes. There's just one element that links the two films - the opening scene. In the original, a woman walks into a police station clutching the severed head of a man. In the sequel, a girl walks into the same station, this time holding the severed head of a woman.

In the original, Radha (Hebah Patel) beheaded her husband Tirupathi (Vasishta N Simha) after discovering that he was the one who had raped and murdered several newly-wed brides. Now, Tirupathi's spirit has turned into a demon and resumed his old ways - killing newly-wed brides and, this time, even grooms.

The villagers can't figure out what's happening but begin to suspect Tirupathi's spirit. A senior police officer dismisses their fears and stays on guard at Tirupathi's burial site to protect the villagers and debunk their supernatural claims - only to be killed by the spirit himself.

Desperate, the villagers approach Radha in jail and seek her help. She tells them to approach her sister Shiva Shakti (Tamannaah Bhatia), who had renounced family life to become a Naga Sadhvi. The villagers then bring Shiva Shakti back to the village so that she can confront the evil spirit.

The film begins to falter the moment Bhatia's character enters. The narrative slows down, gets weighed down by superstition and loopholes, and introduces divine manifestations that feel implausible. Why does Tirupathi's spirit return to haunt the village and kill the newlyweds? Because his corpse was punished in a bizarre ritual, and not because someone killed him. Then, the evil spirit eats chicken, drinks toddy and smokes beedi. Does a spirit need food to maintain its vitals? Does a spirit even have vital organs?

There's more. In the final showdown, Tirupathi's spirit kills Shiva Shakthi in front of the villagers, who are left shocked and gasping. Then, a nearby Nandi statue comes to life, transforms into a beefy bull, emerges from the temple and breathes life into Shiva Shakthi. And Lord Shiva himself manifests and presents her with a trident to kill the evil spirit. If you are asking yourself if the Lord needed to go through all that to kill a spirit, you are not alone.

Also, for Tirupathi's spirit to do all that it does, there's an elaborate set of coincidences needed. Someone wandering by needs to step on the spot where Tirupathi was buried. Then, that person must get injured and bleed exactly at that spot. The blood then needs to seep into the soil. And that's when Tirupathi's soul possesses the wanderer, who then executes the killings and all the rest.

And yes, all of this happens more than once. And even if you take a leap of faith and try to believe what's happening, the way it's happening - and the poor VFX - will force you not to.

The lead actors, Bhatia and Simha, actually deliver decent performances. Bhatia takes on a role of Naga Sadhvi that is vastly different from anything she's done before. She also has a few action sequences which she handles well. Simha, too, performs convincingly as the evil spirit. In fact, his look and stature suit the character perfectly. However, you may still not find their acting enjoyable, because their characters lack any real arc. There are no significant emotional shifts or developments.

What's truly striking about the film, however, is the performance of the extras. They look and act naturally, reacting to death, loss and pain the way real people would. It's neither exaggerated nor overly cinematic - just real.

The camerawork in the movie is decent, but the VFX and prosthetics fall flat. The severed heads and torsos clearly reveal themselves as poorly done prosthetics. The VFX used for the manifestations of Nandi and Lord Shiva look out of place. Instead of relying on CGI, the makers could have used a real bull and a human actor for those sequences - and then enhanced the real footage to achieve the desired effect.

In the end, Odela 2, which promised to be a supernatural horror thriller, ends up as just another good-vs-evil film, with several sequences seemingly inspired by Arundhati and Akhanda. The movie is so predictable, it doesn't qualify as a thriller - and there isn't a single moment that sends a chill down your spine. You're better off watching Odela Railway Station, the original - if you haven't already.