The film historians will easily mark ‘Pizza’ as the golden era of Indian cinema. The film was indeed a great revolution in the pages of showbiz. It broke the stereotypical pattern of filmmaking and storytelling. Such was the impact created by Karthik Subburaj and we have the same producer – CV Kumar of Thirukumaran Entertainment coming up with ‘Pizza 2 – Villa’. The film is directed by Deepan Chakravarthy and stars Ashok Selvan-Sanchitha Shetty in lead roles. Director Deepan’s special attempt to introduce a new-fangled genre ‘Fantasy Thriller’ works at some places and slightly disappoints you as well.
There are three characters we see by the first 20 minutes of this film. Jabin (Ashok Selvan), a writer who has been struggling to get his first break. Then there is a researcher investing the positive and negative vibrations and finally, couple of brothers in conflict over a property. Jabin gets to know that his deceased father (Nasser) has a Villa in Pondicherry, which he had avoided to reside in. Jabin travels to Pondicherry and finds himself lucky to be a part of this house that is loaded with lots of paintings. But sooner, he finds that they are merely not paintings, but are predicting his horrendous future.
On the performance level, Ashok Selvan could have done a better job. He looks the same throughout all the scenes. The actor should have got into the characterisation and breathed deeply. Be it happy moments or the scary ones, he reacts the same. Sanchitha Shetty lives up to the expectations and scores brownie points. Nasser in a cameo role is over the top and others in the cast are okay.
The screenplay has some gripping moments and on pars, few scenes are very sluggish. There is no such thing called horror and thriller here, apart from the intermission and 20 minutes in the second half. Technically, the film has a lot of technical bonanzas – one among them is the Dolby Atmos that gives the best impression in evoking eerie feeling. But why does the filmmaker make us of scare crows and fast whirling winds to indicate the presence of negative vibrations like Black Magic? A million dollar question indeed. Santhosh Narayanan’s background score is awesome and Deepak’s cinematography is an additional attraction.
‘Pizza 2 – Villa’ has the most enthralling moments and there are certain scenes, where you’ll be thrilled to the core, but the establishment of new science by involving black magic doesn’t reach well to the audience. Slightly, it’s an amateurish treatment and Deepak could have handled it with little elegance. However, these negative traits get diminished by the fantastic climax that comes with SJ Surya.
Verdict: Could have been done in a better way.
