Endrendrum Movie Review

Synopsis: Charles (Sathish) moves into a house and finds that it is haunted by Diana’s (Priyanka) spirit. Even as he falls in love with her, he tries to uncover the mystery behind her present state…

Movie Review: For a movie that has romance, murder, supernatural elements and even Christian imagery, Endrendrum is quite bland. A better filmmaker would have whipped up an exciting film out of these elements and we did have one in the not so distant past — Arivazhagan’s Eeram, which was about the ghost of a dead girl guiding her erstwhile lover towards solving her murder. This one too is somewhat similar with certain modifications. The girl here, Diana, is not dead but is in coma and her spirit, which is in a sort-of purgatory, tells Charles, the young man who is staying in her flat (and who falls in love with this spirit), the reason for her predicament, which involves a murder.

What is truly disappointing is that the film fails to deliver on all three fronts and the writing is muddled. The romance is not only underdeveloped but also insipid (talk about the irony of naming the lead characters as Charles and Diana), the murder mystery (with a track involving two cops) is reduced to just a few scenes and lacks and the supernatural element is laughably executed. Charles doesn’t even react shocked when Diana’s spirit appears on the screen and when he tells of a ghost at his place, a church priest tells him that he shouldn’t be bothered as it is only a “good spirit”.

Then, there are the irritating fillers involving a group of pubescent school boys reading porn and being bossed over by Pappu, a kid who is a cinematic cliché, and an overlong segment involving Charles’s friend and his roommate. Calling them comedy tracks would be a sin as they are not even remotely funny.

In the beginning we are told that the movie deals with chaos theory and the opening scene unsubtly features a butterfly moving towards the sea while Charles, in a voice-over, wonders why he stayed in Diana’s house. We wait for a revelation and never get one even after the end credits get over. Instead, what we do get is a spirit film that is dispiriting.