Lohith H’s Chinnari (2016) Movie Review

Star Cast: Priyanka Upendra, Yuvina Parthavi, Aishwarya Shindogi, Madhusudhan Rao, Sridhar, Sandeep, Vathsala
Direction: Lohith H
Cinematographer : H C Venu
Background Score: B Ajaneesh Loknath

Censor Certificate: A & Runtime: 131 Minutes

Let me start off with the conclusion over here, if you are fan of Horror genre and its obvious Chinnari will excite you enough to make you watch on FDFS, then do give it a second thought cause it has nothing fresh to entertain you. Based on the same old story about motherhood and learning how to be a parent. It relies heavily on all repeated stuff making you recall those cheesy Mama (2013), Budugu (2015) and The Conjuring films made couple of years ago.

Lost in the tug of war of love between two women, Chinnari is a tale on the scales to which a mother will go for her child. It centers on 6 months pregnant Priya (Priyanka Upendra), who is trying to get her life back together after the death of her husband in a tragic accident. The family shifts into an ancestral big villa in Goa. When they enter the Villa they never know that they are bringing a doll possessed by Kumari’s spirit, a supernatural spirit extremely obsessed with children and gets close to Kriya (Yuvina Pathavi) in a short stay. But to Priya’s surprise, now she has to face off Kumari who also loves Kriya to the most. Who will win over the girl – Priya or Kumari? Forms the rest of the story.

Chinnari is a low budget horror flick, which largely borrows the elements in the story from Guilermo Del Toro’s Mama (2013) about desperately wandering spirit of motherhood. Which was expanded from a short film by writer director Andres Muschietti with the same name. Here Lohith infuses elements of Motherhood, Ghost doing Dream Interpretation, Banging Doors, doing some loud noises, spirit playing hide & seek with the lead actors. It has the same routine RGV style ambiance throughout, with everything below average starting from the script, direction and acting. However, his efforts of merging human drama with horror flatters as neither does the drama intrigue you nor do the chilly elements completely spook you. The director even leaves out a lot of important points, like why do the doll bleed? Whats the whole point of spooking the others in the villa, through scary dreams? If Spirit was so possessive about children, Why did it try to kill the unborn child? and it never tries to impress and take the kid away from parent? How come no one discusses spooky dreams in the strange situations they are going through? Now, don’t make reveal the terrible Kumari realization sequence. Besides it is kind of hard to list the powers or general modus operandi of the spirit. All living characters and lit have motive behind what they do. So must ghosts. Right.

The debutante film maker relies a lot on the cliched horror elements for an elevated jump scares but having known almost everything about the story in the initial few minutes, the building tension only bores you for you know what eventually will follow. There’s a certain twist that happens post climax, but it so timeworn that you lose your interest even in that. With a badly written script lacking any novelty, Chinnari features all its actors performing like sleep walking through their characters without specific interest. Priyanka Upendra does a fair job but her performance seems laid back, probably because of lackluster script. Child artist Yuvina Pathavi performs effectively. Aishwariya Shindogi fills the bill of eye candy. Madhu, Sridhar, Sandeep and Vathsala are wasted. The spirit in the film look terribly awful with a bad CGI and that remains another reason why they are not able to generate tension and scare as required.

Coming to other technicalities. Dialogues are dull and lifeless. Cinematography by HC Venu is good, while rough editing doesn’t help connect with scenes taking the emotional quotient from it. Background score is too loud, but it supports few scenes in the second half.

Chinnari might have hutzpah, but very sadly it doesn’t have any interest in actually scaring us with something original. The film is only driven by scorn, it wants to nauseate us into meekness. If this sounds like your cup of scuzz and you know who you are, and you won’t be disappointed. But for me, Chinnari only remains as a cheap kind of imitation of the Hollywood, so I would rather suggest you to watch its original if you really want to get some entertainment.

Survi Review: 1.5/5