Balloon Movie Review
The ‘Horror’ genre has already become more synonymous towards Tamil cinema. Over the past couple of years, the monstrous figures unceasingly keep running into long queues. The recent one to join the bandwagon is ‘Balloon’. The film marks the directorial debut of Sinish with Jai, Anjali and Janani Iyer playing the lead roles. Yuvan Shankar Raja has composed music for this horror flick, which has cinematography handled by Saravanan.
It happens most of the times, we are thoroughly borrowed by Hollywood, where novelists and filmmakers happen to be the uninvited guests of house of paranormal activities. Be it John Cussuck in 1408 or our very own Kalaiarasan in ‘Uru’, this happens to be an unconditional theory that persists. Over here, it’s Jeevanandham (Jai), an aspiring filmmaker striving to complete his script to impress his producer. His well narrated script based on communal violence doesn’t strike the interest of his producer, but instead, he craves for a horror tale that is piece of cake at contemporary situation. As he decides to visit a supernatural haunted house to get more inputs in a particular hill station, his family involving wife (Anjali), friends (Yogi Babu & Co) and his cousin brother (Panchu Subbu) son get webbed in paranormal activities.
We get so much tired by the course of film, where we look out to get scared, but instead turn restless with time-worn cheap thrills. Having said that director Sinish wants to credit the list of inspired movies from Hollywood, it would have been better if he had unveiled the list before. This would have made us easily watch those movies at home videos rather than getting irked with ‘Balloon’. The makers happened to project the film as a no-nonsense film, but most of the time, it’s humour that dominates. Nothing to blame upon Yogi Babu, who keeps sparking up with witty one-liners, but then the basic genre of ‘Horror’ does miss in places. Jai can better stay away from his routine styled performance and desperately needs to ameliorate to a better grade. Janani Iyer exhibits good show with what is offered to her.
Yuvan Shankar Raja’s background score
Yuvan Shankar Raja’s background score and songs are the outstanding highlights that come well coherent to cinematography by Saravanan. The DI and colouring has been done with top-notch excellence that adds the eeriness amazingly. The performances of Anjali and that little boy are appreciable. The priest as exorcist and the surprising twist by the end involving his story deserves special mention. But getting through the same flashback and revenge ghost tale would definitely get us tired.
Overall, Balloon has no surprises to offer and even if Sinish hadn’t mentioned the list of Hollywood movies, where he replicated the scenes, it would have been easily henpecked by audiences. Except for few funny lines and very least countable thrills, there is nothing special about this horror flick.
