Erra Gulabilu Movie Review

Behind the Movie Erra Gulabilu: The superb success of ‘Ye Maya Chesave’ made director Gautham Vasudev Menon more popular in Telugu industry too. After the soft and cute love story of YMC, here comes the psychological thriller ‘Erra Gulabilu’ based on a real life story. Let us see, how far Gautham succeeded in this new experiment?

In the Movie Erra Gulabilu: Samar, the eight year old boy is son of a rich sex maniac father in Mumbai. Every day this sex tarred businessman enjoys the life with wine and women in front of his tender kid who also gets indulged into this seduction. The life of Samar continues similarly for four years with fear and pain around him until the aunty next door Meenakshi (Swapna Abraham) informs police about the horrified happenings in life of Samar.

As police attack the house, Samar’s father shoots himself and Meenakshi takes the responsibility of Samar renaming him as Veera (Veera Bahu), who is now sixteen years old. The fresh teenage thoughts mixed with cruel experiences under his father makes Veera lust upon Meenakshi and they get into a sexual relation. 

All of the sudden, Meenakshi marries her childhood friend Krishna but Veera dislikes this turns into a psycho and kills Krishna while Meenakshi is survived with burns as their house gets under fire. Now, Veera is into the key teenage of seventeen, eighteen years and he lands upon in Hyderabad along with dead body of Meenakshi. 

Veera develops a compulsive love disorder and starts believing that Meenakshi is still alive and he is Samar for some time. While the actual Veera targets young girls in city and brings them to bed only to see imprison them. Finally, Veera finds his childhood love Sukanya (Sameera Reddy) who is actually in love with Arjun (Ashwin). 

With in no time, Veera finishes Arjun and kidnaps Sukanya. During this kidnap, police trace the moves of psycho Veera and ACP Vijay (Deva) completes the task of releasing Sukanya and other girls from clutches of Veera that is Samar who is later shifted to mental hospital for treatment where he finds the latest muse in similar lady psycho (Samanta).

Values of the Movie Erra Gulabilu: The story narrated above is the plain format for the sake of convenience of our visitors. Actual movie starts with kidnap of Sukanya without revealing any faces. Later on story unfolds step by step with too and fro flash back episodes that raises the interest of audience to new peaks. 

Hats off to Gautham Menon for dealing such a sensitive story with extraordinary screen play mixed with effective narration. First fifteen minutes of the movie explains the key episodes of story which are well tagged in final episodes. That is the beauty of Gautham’s scripting. Manoj Paramahamsa cinematography is top notch making audience feel the flavor of a true thriller. Editing by Anthony is swift to complete the flick in almost two hours. Production values of Mana Desam are also very good.    

Performance wise Veera is the central point of story. He worked hard portraying the psycho killer suffering with compulsive love disorder. He delivered both in expressions and screen presence. Sameera Reddy arrives near second half and displayed the plenty of acting talent in her. Gautham offered her a role of life and she did it with perfection. Of the remaining cast, Swapna Abraham is a brilliant artist and an eye catching beauty. Deva and Ashwin are more Tamilian faces whom it will be tough to remember.

Out of the Movie Erra Gulabilu: Psychological thrillers are not regular subjects in South cinema. Directors like Gautham are capable men who can handle them and here is best of its kind. The hard hitting reality, cruel bloodshed, terror filled moments, the deep rooted psychic trauma, explicit content makes ‘Erra Gulabilu’ an odd pick. Although twists and turns are caught early yet the movie gets interesting with each and every scene. Keeping the dances, songs, action and comedy away from this sensible flick is a daring adventure from Gautham and his team. 

Movie exposes the life of a psychic disordered man who are normally found one in a million of cases. Gautham kept the underlying message intact on what kind of care and treatment these mentally disordered patients require. All the incidents in film inspired by a real life incident make us feel the chill in spine. Although there are aberrations in dubbing of many scenes, it hasn’t interrupted the flow. 

Erra Gulabilu does not disappoint the movie lovers who appreciate special, creative elements and love the experimentation. For regular movie buffs, this show doesn’t offer any kick and in fact bores you. 

Cinejosh Verdict of the Movie Erra Gulabilu: Extreme Psychological Thriller with Hard Hitting Reality and Indigestibly Explicit in Content.                

                                                                                      Reviewed by Srivaas