Aana movie review: A horror 'salad' made from a dull recipe
Two separate kidnappings amid the rise of an evil supernatural power fail to entertain or scare the audience.
2.0/5
Dec 17, 2021
Aditi Prabhudeva in Aana
Aana
Story: Four friends, including two brothers, are desperate to get rich after losing their jobs following the COVID-19 pandemic. Dissatisfied with robbing strangers, they hatch a plan to kidnap the daughter of a police officer. But that's not the only kidnapping that they do for ransom. Will the second crime finally make them rich or will they repent for their deeds?
Review: Horror returns to haunt Kannada audiences after two years. Before the pandemic struck the world, multiple horror thrillers dared to scare on the silver screen, but many ended up scaring the audience away from theatres! Here, the director Manoj P Nadalumane comes up with a new kind of horror or rather a supernatural power intended to enthral, entertain and eventually scare us.
Well, Aana might scare those who don’t have the stomach for it and usually skip movies like these, but it certainly leaves die-hard horror thriller fans disappointed. It falls under the category - 'neither this (horror) nor that (thriller)'. Aana does leave you haunted, wondering why you watched it in the first place.
Though the first half has something to offer with the unique scheme of kidnapping not one but two, it soon starts to dilute once the horror plot kicks in. The tale of witchcraft and black magic used to fight the British in the pre-Independence era is one of the few impressive parts of this movie, which has a running time of just under two hours.
What’s also a relief is that the movie has no songs, while the background score does the normal job of creating a spooky ambience on the screen. Set in a farmhouse, the four along with the two kidnap victims, start to experience the presence of an evil being.
Aditi Prabhudeva who plays Aana a.k.a Anarghya, adds another feather in her cap in a short but scary role. The rest are watchable for their decent performances.
Verdict: Aana is strictly not for die-hard fans of horror-thriller movies, as it lacks the much-needed scare factor for that edge-of-the-seat experience. However, it ends with a new beginning, so brace yourself for Aana 2 in the near future.
* (Shashiprasad SM is a freelance journalist based in Bengaluru)
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