After starring in horror comedies like Devi and Devi 2, Tamannaah is back to the horror-comedy genre with the movie Petromax directed by Athe Kangal fame Rohin Venkatesan. Here's team AP Herald's exclusive first on net Petromax review.
A wealthy NRI returns to sell his ancestral property which is told to be haunted and hence he sends in four people inside the house to prove it wrong. Whether the four people namely Sathyan, Kaali Venkat, Munishkanth and TSK were able to prove it, who was Tamannaah and what happened to her is what Petromax is all about.
Tamannaah gives a decent performance and she's overtly expressive at times. The comedy combo Sathyan, Munishkanth, and Kaali Venkat are good and evoke laughs while Tsk and Yogi Babu are annoying. The rest of the cast including Prem Kumar and mime Gopi are cliched and don't have significance. The young kid has done a commendable performance as she emotes the fear and boldness well. Sathyan is trying desperately to evoke laughter as a deaf ghost. The cinema ghost guy is too farcical with his body language.
Ghibran's background score is adequate and haunting at times and none of his songs impress. Cinematography by Dani Raymond is good capturing horror episodes well, while editing by Leo John Paul is poor. The VFX are too pathetic and sometimes more silly. The team should have focused a lot on Visual effects and prosthetic makeup during such horror flicks. Not even a single scene is either funny or scary and that's where the movie's writing goes haywire and falls backward than the original.
Director Rohin Venkatesan has come up with a remake this time after Athe Kangal and Petromax is nowhere closer to Anando Brahma in terms of performances, comedy, and screenplay. While Tamannaah herself hams at times the rest of the cast tries hard to evoke laughs and succeed only on a few occasions and the movie is flat and predictable for most parts. All said, despite Tamannaah's best efforts to keep the audience glued, the predictability affects Petromax.
