Nakulan (Shuresh Gopi) and his wife Ganga (Shobana) have moved back
into his family home that has been abandoned for years - and have to find
out it's haunted by a spirit that's especially fond of scaring the shit
out of the personnel. They try all sorts of ghost busters, exorcists and
magicians to drive away the ghost, but nothing seems to work. Then though,
Nakulan has the idea to call his friend Sunny Joseph (Mohanlal), a
renowned psychiatrist, for help, a man that first drives everyone nuts
with his eccentric methods, but eventually, he finds out that the problem
is with Ganga herself, who suffers from a case of schizophrenia, and a
locked up room in the mansion has triggered another aspect of her
personality to come to the fore - a personality set in historical India
whom Sunny manages to exorcise only by staging a big show at the
highlight of which Ganga is to behead her husband - or rather a dummy that
was exchanged for him in the very last moment. In the end though, it
seems as if Ganga is healed, and she is allowed to head off with her
husband as if nothing has happened. A blend of horror and
comedy, in which the comedy elements spoil the horrific set-up of the
finale for the longest time - so much so that the film could have easily
done without the first half or more and still be totally comprehensible.
Actually, the whole thing does not start to really gain momentum until the
last quarter, when Mohanlal finds out about Shobana's condition and she -
a rather uninteresting character thus far - gives an impressive
performance as the too-good-to-be-true wife gone mad. The rest
unfortunately is just funny characters running from real or imaginary
scares, which gets annoying before too long. Still, the finale makes up
for most (if not all) of the movie's shortcomings. All my criticism
aside, this film from the Kerala-branch of the Indian film industry (and
therefore in Malayalam language) was so successful that it spawned a whole
bunch of remakes in most of the subcontinent's other languages.
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