Winter

Medium : Malayalam
Starring : Jayaram, Bhavana, Manoj K Jayan
Director : Deepu
Music : Rajkrishnan, Benny

Following the trend of films like ‘Nammal Thammil’ and ‘Ayirathil Oruvan’, another film ‘Winter’ has released now, after being kept unreleased on a span of 5-6years. It is acted by Jayaram and Bhavana. The director of the film is Deepu (once assistant to Priyadarshan, Rajeevkumar etc). Though Deepu’s first film is releasing now only, he has given a film with Dileep last year, ‘Crazy Gopalan’.

The story happens in a village situated far away from Hyderabad. The hero (Jayaram) is a doctor, who lives with his wife and two young daughters. They are witnessing some unusual experiences from their newly bought house. They find the problem with the vasthu, as the reason for this. Even though an atheist, he decides to shift the house since the tensions are high. They came to know about the brutal killings of many children happened in the same place, a year before. Though the culprit was killed in an accident, similar incidents have started again. The police are adamant in capturing the new criminal. In the climax, the killer attacks the hero’s daughters and at the same time, the hero reaches there and finishes the villain. The family decides to stay back in the house.

It looks like the writer-director has been deeply inspired by the style of notable film maker Ram Gopal Varma and hollywood films. ‘Winter’ has got the flavor of many films by RGV like ‘Bhoot’, ‘Raat’, ‘Jungle’, ‘Darna Mana Hai’, ‘Darna Zaroori Hai’, ‘Phoonk’, ‘Vasthushastra’ etc. Most of these films have got the theme mainly concentrated on a house and the happenings inside it. Even the calling bell sound is repetitive (but Varma used a more frightening sound).

Here the director has tried to keep the suspense from the beginning. At the moment the villain is showed all on a sudden inside the hero’s house, the whole tempo is lost and thus the ending of the film becomes usual. In the middle, the attitude of hero’s daughter created a doubt on the mind of psychiatrist (Manoj K Jayan), but that was also not discussed properly later. The base story thus affected the film a lot. The lack of rich outdoor scenes is evident. (Some frames have been affected with the “old-syndrom effect” due to the late release…)

Horror movies had always been a passion for me. If it is neatly visualized, a good thrilling experience is guaranteed from it. Even Ram Gopal Varma’s new film is based on the unknown enemy in the dense forest; this shows the popularity of horror movies. Still I believe that ‘Bhoot’ is one of the best horror movie made in the country. So after seeing many such films, we can’t easily accept something which is not created with the cent percent quality, even if in malayalam.

Deepu, as a director has done his job well; but his skill as a writer failed in the middle. The film covering only 5 or 6 artists is shot using a small budget within the limitations (location courtesy – Ramoji Rao film city). Background score by Benny and DTS mix by Rajkrishnan, helped to maintain the tempo to a certain level. Jayakrishnan Gummidi is the cinematographer and Arunkumar, who always works for Priyadarshan films, is the editor here.

‘Winter’ is a different attempt which would have been done more neatly. Since we have seen many better films in the same category before, it lacks freshness.

Rating : 6 / 10