Inspite of not so encouraging result of his earlier film Muni, choreographer turned director Raghava Lawrence somehow managed to make a sequel to it titled Muni 2 - Kanchana. The movie, as promoted, has enough spine chilling moments, but is devoid of any emotion that makes anyone relate to the story.

What’s it about : Raghava (Lawrence) is a seemingly happy go lucky youngster, who most often plays cricket, but suffers from extreme noctiphobia (fear of the night). Even though he seems twenty-something, he still needs to sleep close to his mom (Kovai Sarala) and is scared very easily by horror stories narrated by his brothers’ kids. One fine day Raghava and his teammates have to find an alternative ground to play cricket and they end up going to an eerie looking old site. They are chased by some unseen power, and everyone scatters off. But unbeknownst to Raghava, he seems to have brought home a force that does not belong to this world. Strange things begin to happen at his home, and it isn’t long before the people at home discover that they are sharing their home with not one, but three ghosts, all finding shelter in Raghava’s body. In a parallel story a politician finds that few of his supporters are being killed mercilessly.

Raghava’s mother calls sufi exorcists, and it is revealed that the name of the main ghost inside Raghava is Kanchana. Under the exorcist’s spell Kanchana narrates a story that leads to a bloody climax.

What is Good : Kanchana manages to survive mostly on scaring the audiences with situations that keep you on the edge of the seat. At the heart of story, there is an unexpected support to eunuchs, who most often as kids do not know how to deal with themselves. The guest appearance of Sharath Kumar as a eunuch gives us some glimpse of a storyline towards the end of the film, which otherwise is built on a wafer thin premise.

What is bad: While most often horror films have very clichéd stories, it is generally up to the screenplay to make up for it. However, the screenplay of Kanchana is pretty much this – a horror scene followed by a song followed by another scary moment followed by a loud comic scene followed by another scary scene. Any iota of emotion is brought late towards the climax, which is plainly spoilt by visual effects that are more comical than scary. Lawrence is no Vikram to play the roles of three different characters, and his only moment in the movie is a dance dressed like a eunuch. Kovai Sarala is at her irritable best with her over the top histrionics. Lakshmi Rai is limited to songs, and has nothing to do with the central theme of the story. It is extremely annoying to listen to the same dubbing voices that you hear in daily soaps, and the strong Tamil flavors hardly helps. As a result Kanchana becomes an attempt of frightening the audiences than telling an emotional story!

Technical Departments : Most often the scary moments work in the film because of Thaman’s background score and some weird camera angles. The songs are forgettable, while most other technical aspects have nothing special to be mentioned about. The visual effects we see in Kanchana are in no way competition to the best work we have seen in recent Telugu films. Most of the movie has been shot in few locations, cutting down the production costs, which to an extent is appreciable. Lawrence’s attempt to terrify the viewers might work to an extent, but his ability to tell a story is still very limited!

Bottomline : If you are looking for cheap thrills, Kanchana could be your movie. But don’t be surprised even if they start boring you towards the end.