Mane Number 13 Movie Review Rating: 1/5 Stars (One stars)
Star Cast: Ramana, Varsha Bollamma, Aishwarya Gowda, Praveen Prem, Chethan Gandharva and ensemble.
Advertisement
Director: Vivy Kathiresan
Advertisement
What’s Bad: that they did put money and it got made.
Loo Break: Take plenty, you deserve them.
Watch or Not?: Only if you want to curse your decision on the 107th minute.
User Rating:
Mane Number 13 is about a group of friends, who end up in a haunted villa. The ghost there is pissed off and begins killing them one after the other. The quest now is to find if it is a ghost or…. Maybe I might have created more intrigue with the summary than the 2 hours film did.
The film takes off from the age-old done to death line, ‘a group of friends arrive at a haunted villa’. You can literally let your horses run as randomly as they can from here because that is what even writer Vivy Kathiresan does.
Mane Number 13 doesn’t even qualify to be a half baked product. The film that promises to be a gut-wrenching horror, ends up being a snooze fest. The writing doesn’t do justice to anything here. There are three parallel narratives running, but none get the depth they deserve. My sympathies are with the ghost whose capabilities are questioned so many times, that I would have resigned from the ghost association if I was her. Every time an absurd thing happens, it turns out to be a prank or a human-created mess. The ghost is side-lined criminally.
Not that the humans get the weightage. 5 individuals in the centre of this narrative are as one tone as they can possibly be. Not a single character gets a layer. Also, why on Earth none of their families are concerned about their kids in this universe? I say this because it is the easiest layer one could add to a character. It seems scenes were written randomly on the sets and dialogues left on the cast to decide.
Advertisement
What can the actors do if the foundation itself is not supporting the castle? Of course, they can run away, but maybe it was too late, and they had already signed the dotted line. There are five stereotypes called characters in the film. One who does not believe in ghost, one who is afraid, one has a neutral stand, and two girls because come on, who will watch a ghost movie if a woman does not scream at the top of her voice?
I feel bad for Varsha Bollamma who is stuck in this haphazard affair. I want to erase the memory of her from here and remember the amazing Sandhya from Middle Class Melodies.
Rest all including Ramana, Aishwarya Gowda, Praveen Prem, Chethan Gandharva end up being the paper-thin characters they are written. Who scream in close-ups and act as if they have seen the ugliest thing on this planet.
Remember watching Fear Files on a Television channel? Vivy Kathiresan gets his inspiration from there it seems. Close up shots, flickering lights, a ghost with too much powder on her face with a scar, and screaming, lots of it make for his idea of a horror drama. We already had a lot of it.
Music does nothing here. Instead, it only makes you laugh at how much the makers are trying to feed emotions to you with the crescendo.
The horror element here isn’t a ghost, but the fact that there are people out there who still find mettle in these stories, and invest money in them. It’s time our horror stories evolve too. Jump scares no longer scare us. Watch Andhaghaaram that released a couple of days back on Netflix, that is what evolution in the genre stands for.
Mane Number 13 releases on 26th November, 2019.
Share with us your experience of watching Mane Number 13.
Advertisement
Must Read: Dark 7 White Review: A Flawed But Binge-Worthy Murder Mystery Where You Should Expect The Unexpected
Follow Us: Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Youtube
Advertisement
Advertisement
