Raju Viswanath makes his debut as director with Lisaa, marketed as ‘India’s first ever stereoscopic 3D horror film’ - lots of words to call it a 3D film. Except two jump scares that might manage to evoke the faintest gasp from you, the film has no horror in it. Perhaps it is time for us to question why filmmakers choose the already wrung-dry horror genre, cast a woman actor as its lead and completely squander a promising one-liner - in this case, a woman visits her grandparents who live away from civilisation for the very first time, a premise that M Night Shyamalan used so well in The Visit - with a poorly executed horror film.
To watch a horror film that not just lacks “horror” but also a convincing story and most of all, basic logic, turns out to be a complete waste of time and money (the only horror about it). Thinking back, the previous sentence had more horrors in it than the film.
Anjali plays Lisaa, but we don’t know much about who she is or what she does. We, however, are told that Lisaa grew up without a father and was brought up entirely by her mother.
“With my father being a military man, he did not accept the man I loved. I had to elope with your father when I was 17. Soon, you were born and your father passed away when you were just two. I haven’t gone back to visit my parents since, neither have I been in touch with them,” Lisaa's mother tells her adult daughter a story that she should ideally have known already.
Lisaa, who is planning on moving to the US, wants her mother to find a partner. But this is where logic is thrown out of the window. Lisaa’s mother does not want to marry again because she fears her parents - the same people she hasn’t met in over two decades - because they would not agree. Eh?!
So, Lisaa plans for a trip to her grandparents’ who live in the “Western Ghats” and actor Sam Jones as Jaggu, poor thing, is just like that pulled into the story. We’re told Lisaa is his college senior. Stay with us, there’s more.
We believe the scenes where Jaggu’s parents, Brahmanandam and Surekha Vani, appear are lifted directly from a regional TV’s daily soap. It is obvious that their portions were shot in Telugu with their lip sync in these Tamil dubbed portions looking very off. If that isn’t bad enough, Brahmanandam’s lines are cringe-worthy, especially when he's made to flirt with a ghost. Yogi Babu appears in three scenes and even in that short span, they've managed to include body shaming jokes.
With all these let-downs, the film fails miserably to set the mood for a good horror film. Rule 101 for making a horror film: for scares to work, the setting and its characters will have to be as natural as possible, only then will it manage to jolt the audience into believing in the effects that the film hopes to execute.
To make things worse, there’s a song and dance sequence when Lisaa is on her way to her grandparents. Surely everyone travelling to the “Western Ghats” just gets down from their car to sing and dance!
A gate that closes on its own, a rocking chair that stops mid-rock, a hand print that appears in the middle of the night on a glass panel and a few scary faces that pop up in weird camera angles - all of them have no originality and the film literally blacks out in parts as a excuse to jump to the next scene.
As for the performances, while actor Makrand Deshpande who plays the grandfather looks and sounds overly theatrical, it is the grandmother who has done a convincing job. Yesteryear actor Saleema, who has appeared in Telugu and Malayalam cinema, single-handedly and convincingly carries the eerie aura throughout while Makrand dampens it by playing absurd games like stabscotch and Russian roulette. We’re never told why he plays them either.
Even with a shoddy storyline, Anjali manages to lead you plumb into some of the scares, especially when she has you believing that she could be possessed at one point.
The harshest slap on the face for choosing to watch this film, however, comes in the very end when we are given a message that involves the elderly. We surely didn’t see that coming by miles. And to think we saw it all in 3D!
Disclaimer: This review was not paid for or commissioned by anyone associated with the series/film. TNM Editorial is independent of any business relationship the organisation may have with producers or any other members of its cast or crew.