Strawberry - Preachiness horrified!

Looks like kollywood is determined to exploit the horror genre to its hilt. If we are to take an average of all the films released in the past year, at least 2 films (big or small budgeted) releasing in a month would fall in the horror genre or at least would be having a supernatural element tucked into its narrative core. Unlike many hollywood filmmakers who would hardly have any hesitation in painting the spirit as plane jane evil, here in kollywood our makers are drawn towards giving a justification for the evil spell from the spirit. Usually it’ll have a flashback where the baddies would have had a field day and then the ghost of the victim would give it in return, which is essentially a spin off of a star playing to the galleries after getting hit for a few times and falling straight to the ground before making the goons fly to the orbit - the erstwhile MGR/Sivaji technique finds a spiritual form.

Strawberry, which marks the directorial debut of lyricist Pa.Vijay follows the above mentioned classic trend earmarked for kollywood horror films. Along with it he has taken a dig at the educational system that is being ruined by businessmen who’ve rightfully transformed it into another lucrative business platform neglecting the nuances and concentrating more on milking the parents for moolah. While the premise sounded quite interesting with the witch hunter (Joe Malluri) dispersing “gyaans” on how to summon the spirits and establish a connection with them under a conducive platform, the narrative then takes a blind u-turn and panders to the perceived tastes of the so called “B and C” centers and tries to throw a mixed bag of emotions, comedy, action and thrills that not only weakens the narrative but makes it impossible to sit through after a point.

Pa.Vijay has miscast himself as the protagonist and on top of that he tries to woo the masses with some badly and tastelessly worked out comedy with ‘Robo’ Shankar who just came out from a brilliant performance in Maari. The female lead, Avni Modi seems to have been kidnapped from her acting classes midway. She doesn’t seem to bother about the lines that she is mouthing. Her emotions and dialog delivery were perfectly out-of-sync, again thanks to bad direction. Samuthirakani had some meat in his role and the little one, Yuvina, who is the anchor of the whole movie had a meatier role, which she did it with conviction, though it went overboard at times with the typical “intelligent kid” symptoms riddling her role.

One has to accept that there is a tried and tested “revenge template” for all ghost movies. One who breaks it and tries to scare people would emerge as the winner like how Mysskin did it with Pisasu. Else it has to be done like how director Vikram Kumar did with his ‘Yaavarum Nalam’ by basing his script on the revenge template but the narrative twist was brilliant or like Raghava Lawrence who is doing it with huge doses of masala. This one by Pa.Vijay just doesn’t seem to have any clue and falls flat with a preachy outlook that is scarier than the ghost itself!

Verdict: Avoidable

Rating: 1.5 / 5