Oh My Ghost Movie Review: Packed to the brim with bad writing and bland acting
In the pursuit of trying to be both a horror and a comedy, Oh My Ghost fails at being neither of them. It was more of an eyes-on-the-clock than an edge-of-your-seat experience
Oh My Ghost abides by that sacred, unshakeable, set-in-stone rule of Tamil cinema — Horror films work better as horror comedies — that has been disapproved by scores of films, including this one. It might be too easy to say that the comedy was horrifying, and the horror was laughable at best, but that would mean ascribing entertainment value to the film, and OMG! that would be a mistake.
Director: R Yuvan
Cast: Sunny Leone, Sathish, Ramesh Thilak, Darsha Gupta, Yogi Babu
The film opens in a small village by the name of Anacondapuram... is that a pun or a sexual innuendo, or just a funny-sounding name? We’ll never know and maybe we’re not meant to know such things. And just like that the tone of the film is established and we’re made to adjust our expectations accordingly, and yet OMG still manages to go spectacularly downhill.
As the film progresses, we’re introduced to roommates played by Sathish and Ramesh Thilak. Sathish is trying to break into the erotic film industry as a director and Ramesh is trying to be his cinematographer (it's never really clear). The plot following Sathish and Ramesh, which overstays its welcome in OMG, had the potential to work, but the dialogues sink it like the Titanic.
There seems to be no thought process behind any of the 'jokes'. Every attempt at comedy, every line uttered leaves us exasperated. What is worse than this is the desperation of the writers to resort to crass and low-brow humour to wring out non-existent laughs. As we meander through the taxing set-up, the actual plot of the film abruptly arrives or is rather thrown at us hastily at the midpoint of the film. We are introduced to an ancient warrior Queen Mahasena (Sunny Leone). While there is no doubt that OMG is completely reliant on Sunny Leone's star power, her big debut in Tamil could have definitely landed on firmer shores. Apart from an ostentatious song sequence that looks like it had a budget that rivalled that of the entire film, her scenes in the film fail to leave a lasting impression. As for the performance of other actors, Sathish looks dejected for the most part and we could hardly blame him considering the lines he was made to deliver. Ramesh Thilak took his work seriously enough but since none of the characters in the film come off as likeable, his performance seems like a wasted effort.
Like a hot bowl passed around from one hand to another, the sordid job of supplying humour to the film is then passed on to Yogi Babu when the story moves to the period setting. Does he deliver? Nope, because as good as he is, inflections, body language, and dialogue delivery can only do so much, and they are certainly not enough to prop up the weak writing.
Oh My Ghost could have easily crossed the so-bad-it's-good threshold but it adamantly fails to entertain us in even that way.
