What Is the Story About?
Murugan, a magazine journalist who specialises in paranormal stories, travels to Malaysia to listen to and write horror stories that tweaks reality and make-believes. What starts off as a run of the mill horror story changes into a life-altering mystery when Murugan meets Shankar, who shares a chilling paranormal experience that he and his friends experienced. Murugan decides to unearth the mystery behind the happenings, only to find himself trapped in a chamber of secrets.
Performances?
RJ Ramana does a decent job as Ramana. Although he is the protagonist of the film, he doesn’t get a lot to do artistically. Ganesan Manohgaran as Guru, Tinesh Sarathi Krishnan as Shankar and Logan Nathan as Anbu give some fine performances. Their characters are as rooted as their performances and succeeds in make-believing the audience about the larger than life paranormal entity.
Analysis
Poochandi is a monster horror directed by JK Wicky from a story and screenplay penned by Thanabalan Kuppusamy. A deviation from template jump-scare horror and horror-comedies, this is a creature comedy that takes inspiration from a Tamil term ‘Poochandi’ often used to frighten children.
The story starts off like any found-footage film with a scarecrow imagery that cuts forward to the protagonist Murugan. He is a Tamil journalist from Madhurai who is in Malaysia to write paranormal stories for a local magazine. He meets people who have experienced paranormal activities, researches and writes about them.
One day Murugan meets Shankar, who narrates a paranormal incident that he and his friends Anbu and Guru experienced. Anbu is partially paralyzed and collects vintage items and coins as a hobby. Shankar recollects the time when they began playing the Ouija board and how things started going wrong with the trio past their tryst with the forbidden game.
All of these proceedings follow a usual spirit-flashback template and slowly the genre shifts from horror to the mystery. Once Murugan, Shankar and Anbu begin to unravel the spirit’s past, they stumble upon a historic connection that tracks back to many centuries. Unarguably the best thing about the film is the mystery. There are also cleverly placed easter eggs like the reference to the Tamil movie Aayirathil Oruvan (2010) throughout the film, hinting at a befitting creature origin story.
For most part of it’s 115 minutes duration, the film bends genres to deliver a very interesting back story to the very commonly used ‘poochandi’ concept in South India.The production design and making looks very amateurish and the budget constraints are very evident, but the writing does a decent job when it comes to taking up a concept that has an element of mystery to it. The shots, colouring, score and editing reminds you of a low-budget short-film, to say the very least.
However, this is a commendable effort. Besides carefully evading lazy and convenient jump-scare tropes that would have probably garnered more mainstream appreciation, the writing team has focussed more on delivering an enticing mystery. The screenplay has its share of flaws and consistency drips, but still manages to keep the inquisitiveness of the audience intact till the very end.
In short, more than the atmospheric build-up to the flashback, it is the graphically revealed and narrated origin tale of Poochandi that takes the cake and makes the time spent on the film worthy. If only the story got the budget it deserved and the makers handled the story differently, Poochandi would have been a game-changer in Monster horror apart from the history lessons it would have given.
Music and Other Departments?
The background score doesn’t do anything to elevate the story or the moments. In fact everything about this film apart from its cast and core story screams low-effort. The cinematography department’s lethargy also pulls the whole film down from becoming a benchmark film.
Highlights?
Core Story
Element of Mystery
Cast
Absence of template jump-scares
Drawbacks?
Under-explored Mystery
Duration
Hurried Climax
Weak Production Value
Did I Enjoy It?
Yes. In parts.
Will You Recommend It?
Yes. But with huge reservations.
Poochandi Review by Binged Bureau
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