Avunu 2 : Captain Raju doesn’t care to scare
With some innovative promotions, and Avunu being one of the decent thrillers in Telugu cinema, the sequel has created quite a pre-release buzz. Sequels are made when the first film gets a great applause. However, if the ingredients remain more or less the same the second time too, it’s highly unlikely to repeat the same magic.
Avunu 2 unfortunately falls in that group. The sequel followed a similar setup and execution which creates a déjà vu. The only significant difference in this second part is Captain Raju is promoted to a tech-savvy spirit but more on that, later.
For those, who haven’t watched Avunu, it has a newlywed couple, Harsha (Harshavardhan Rane) and Mohini (Poorna) entering a haunted house. Captain Raju is the evil spirit who stalks Poorna with extreme lust. The invisible pervert’s attempts to molest the lady fail. The climax had Raju still stalking Poorna, after the couple assumes that they got rid of him.
Avunu 2 begins exactly where Avunu ends. Harsha and Poorna meet a Naga Sadhu on a trip to Varanasi. The Naga Sadhu and offers a locket to Poorna which can put the devil away. The couple move to apartments in the heart of city unlike the outskirts in the first part. Every nook and corner of the hi-tech new home can be controlled by tablets and mobiles. Raju follows them and enters the new apartment too. However, the Varanasi-made-ghost-repelling-locket saves Poorna from time to time. The rest of the film is about Raju exploiting the gadgets at home to try and get that locket off the Poorna’s neck. He swipes on the mobile to stop a washing machine. He swipes on the tablet to close the windows. Oh Boy! Captain Raju is ineed tech-savvy.
From the beginning to end, the movie tries hard to thrill but miserably fails. The major flaw seems to be the lack of freshness that Avunu had. There is neither horror nor a thrill. Forget about spine-chilling sequences, the element of curiously itself is gone post the interval. The background score which is so important hardly adds any value to the already bland proceedings. The penultimate 30 minutes is in fact the most uninteresting episode in the whole film. Of course, the end unsurprisingly gives a clue that Avunu 3 is in the cards.
The only part of the movie that raised curiosity was the neighbor’s story which was also at times too loud and unpalatable. The way the neighbor’s story culminated deserves full marks though.
The performances from the main cast were decent if not extra-ordinary. The effects were good too. Ravi Babu’s love for maintaining a limited color theme throughout the movie is visible this time too. His attempt to bring newness to the story through tech-friendly home can be appreciated. However, the ghost scanning equipment scenes led to a couple of unintentionally funny scenes.
To sum it up, the movie utterly disappoints with its insipid treatment hardly raising any curiosity.
