Tenant movie review: A pandemic thriller with a decent plot and execution that’s just a tad too long

Tenant movie review: Director Sridhar Shastri’s Tenant runs at less than an hour and a half, and yet has portions that lag

Rakesh Maiya and Sonu Gowda in Tenant

Tenant movie story: Kamalesh (Rakesh Maiya), who runs a modest grocery store, and his wife Damini (Sonu Gowda), live in an independent house left to them by his parents, part of which they’ve let out to Sundresh (Dharma Keerthiraj). Fed up with the tenant’s incessant littering, Damini urges Kamalesh to get him to vacate, but when he fails to take her seriously, she drops a bomb that Sundresh had been making indecent advances on her.

Kamalesh and Sundresh get into a scuffle, at the end of which, the former dies. Is Sundresh responsible, or is there more than meets the eye? That’s what Jay (Tilak), a police officer investigating a report of a fight has to piece together.

Tenant movie review: When the team of the Kannada thriller Tenant spoke about the subject being set during the pandemic, the instant thought was that it’s too late to be telling a lockdown story. Debutant director Sridhar Shastri, though, maintained that the setting was a necessary plot element and could not be changed around, which does make sense given its single location setting.

Tenant explores the dark side of the lockdown, says director Sridhar Shastri 

The pandemic was far from pleasant for most people, which gets a mention in Sridhar’s thriller. His story, though, is a murder mystery in which the perpetrators use the lockdown to their advantage to get away with their crime. But can they?

On paper, the story of Tenant is not bad. The onscreen presentation is also quite decent. The film’s run-time is only 98 minutes, which seems apt for a mystery thriller. That is, however, where Tenant falters – even 98 minutes feels like an eternity, what with 2 songs included to establish plot points. A good 15-20 minutes shorter, Tenant would, perhaps, been a lot more effective.

The film revolves around 4 main characters played by Rakesh, Sonu, Dharma and Tilak, with Ugramm Manju in a pivotal cameo. The twists in the plot that these characters present may seem predictable, if you’ve seen enough content in the genre, but perhaps not the one that Sridhar ends his film with. A satisfying end, one must say.

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Tenant movie verdict: Tenant’s slow pace and predictability apart, it does make for a one-time watch. 

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