Shanmukha Review

Childbirth is no joke - ask any mother. Now, imagine a baby with six heads. Six. A biological impossibility? Absolutely. A physiological nightmare? Beyond words. But hey, this is fantasy, where logic takes a long vacation.

Alright, let's roll with it. Suppose a six-headed baby was somehow born (RIP, medical science). The next impossible feat? Magically shrinking those six heads down to one - after he's grown up. If that wasn't an outlandish enough premise, Shanmukha shows this transformation happens through occult rituals involving human sacrifices. Cue the collective facepalm.

A logical film might have debunked all this sorcery nonsense by the end. But no, this one doubles down. And if you think that is the weirdest thing in Shanmukha, buckle up - this movie has many more surprises.

Viganda (Chirag Jani), a devotee of Goddess Kali, has an ugly, hunchbacked son with six heads. He names his son Viganda Shanmukha. Upon seeing the boy's face, Viganda's wife, Vedaka, is shocked. The village children are also afraid of and disgusted by the newborn. Determined to transform his son from a six-headed hunchback into a handsome man, he seeks the advice of a magician, and resorts to various occult rituals.

Meanwhile, several girls from the locality go missing, and some of their boyfriends commit suicides. Sara (Avika Gor), a criminology researcher, investigates the disappearances with the help of her boyfriend and police officer, Karthi (Aadi Saikumar).

As mentioned earlier, the story is absurd, and the less said about it, the better. The plot is so full of holes, it feels like it's been through a paper shredder.

Ideally, the movie should have focused on the missing girls. But just as the investigation gets started, the story takes a sharp detour into social issues and drug rackets - because, why not?

The movie then presents you with the backstory of Karthik and Sara - how they fell in love, how they broke up, and how they patched things up. It adds nothing to the plot, and just fills some time with songs and grand locations.

Then, a sharpshooter follows Karthik and Sara, but does nothing when the duo is in his focal range. Why he does that, you'll never know.

And before even all of this, before the story zeroes in on Shanmukha, the film throws a parade of random characters and disconnected scenes at you, leaving you dazed and confused. Indeed, the director's chosen screenplay structure is so convoluted that predicting what happens next is like solving a Rubik's Cube blindfolded.

But if you think the plot is the only thing that defies logic, wait till you witness the technical disasters lurking in every department of filmmaking. From the very first frame, the movie bombards you with so many glitches that you lose all faith in what you're watching.

Then there are the makeup and costumes - if you can call them that. Maybe the budget was so tight that wigs and fake beards on the occult practitioners are barely hanging on, and the pishachas look like they got their makeup done at a budget Halloween store. But the true peak of cosmetic catastrophe? Shanmukha himself. His prosthetics and paint job are so shoddy that you can literally see patches melting off his body, held together only by sweat and sheer cinematic desperation.

Here's one more. Shanmukha has aged from being a baby to an adult, but the rest of the characters look the same. Shanmukha's father Viganda actually looks younger than when Shanmukha was born.

Saikumar delivers a passable performance - if by performance you mean endless action sequences. Even the tiniest confrontation gets an over-the-top fight scene. In this movie, talking things out is never an option.

The rest of the cast is a glorious mess. Some are stuck in soap opera mode, others go full theatrical, and the rest give performances so lifeless, they might as well be reading cue cards off-screen. Avika Gor seems to have hit rewind on her career, slipping back into the melodrama of her TV soap days. Chirag Jani acts like a mythological villain with theatrics. And then there's Shanmugam Sappani, the director himself, who plays a sharp-shooter (or so he thinks). His acting is so wooden, you'll wonder why he bothered at all. Honestly, any random extra from the background could've done a better job - blindfolded.

As already mentioned, the movie is a technical disaster in the visual department. The music is not far behind - Ravi Basrur, a genius composer, somehow delivers his worst work here. The soundtrack is so deafening and uneven that you'll wonder if the mixing team was actively trying to punish the audience. It's blasting your eardrums like an overenthusiastic DJ.

Avoid this one at all costs.