Tamil cinema has been relentlessly witnessing the arrival of many horror movies and ‘Ra’ becomes the latest one to join the league. Does the film stand out to be difference in this genre or how far different forms crux of the story of Ra...

 Synopsis

 Ashraf and Athithi have been in love for years, but unexpectedly on the night of their marriage, Athithi passes away mysteriously. The post-mortem reports claim that she had a heart attack. Unable to overcome this huge loss, he remains in the same house, where he comes across some paranormal activities. To make things clear, he shifts to a new house along with his mother, sister and her kid. But yet again, the phenomenal activities keep haunting him and Ashraf decides to unravel the mystery behind it.

 Performance

 Ashraf gets a meaty role throughout the film and gets more opportunity to emote in unparalleled manner. He expresses the best of his emotions on joy, pain, frustrations and in all situations. Although Akshara doesn’t get much to explore her potentials, she has done a neat task. Others in the cast have indeed enacted the roles with an ease that includes Lawrence Ramu, Police officer Jai, Geetha Babu playing Ashraf’s mother and Rithika as his sister have done justice to their roles.

 Plus

 As mentioned above, the casting of actors and their decorous performances makes ‘Ra’ quite engrossing in places. Although, the spooky elements that are presented look stereotypical, it makes sure that we are scared. One of the greatest highlights in this film is the short duration of 2hrs approximately and crisp narration. Usually horror films have lots of gory violence, bloodshed and many prototyped formulae, but ‘Ra’ tries something out of this usual paradigms.

 Minus

 There are few sequences in the film that could have been very well treated with engaging quotients. Logic gets missing suddenly and the director has faintly copycatted the scene of walking through the dream and finding the mystery from the world famous horror movie ‘Insidious’. It looks like the filmmakers in Kollywood have nothing to discover on their own and it really needs some Japanese or Hollywood films for inspiration.

Overall, Ra might be the scariest film that you have seen, but if offers its toast of eerie feeling in places.

Verdict : Doesn’t offer Goosebumps, but scares in few places

Stars : 2.5/5