Housemates Movie Review: A zany horror that mostly delivers the goods

Unless it's a star vehicle, it is quite the daunting task to keep the audience engrossed with a clichéd first half. Even if a decent or brilliant second half follows, more often than not, the damage is already done. However, debut director Rajavel, despite hitting us with one cliché in the initial scenes, somehow convinces us that our patience would be rewarded with something wacky. And in Darshan's Housemates, the clichés do not act as fun-sponges, and the ideas introduced are amusing.

Housemates begin with Darshan's Karthik, who is anxious to register a house in his name to convince his girlfriend Anu's (Aarsha Baiju) father for their wedding. Though Anu's father is reluctant to marry off his daughter to Karthik, they tie the knot eventually. As soon as Karthik realises the middle-class dream of getting married and owning a house, Anu senses something is off. Living all his life in a rented house, owning a haunted place might not have been on Karthik's bucket list, and Housemates is about how this couple tackle the conundrum, and react and respond when they discover they were tilting at windmills.

Rajavel, who worked as a writer in the Demonte Colony franchise, impresses with his directorial debut by taking a calculated risk in the first 30 minutes of the film. Every single thing feels familiar; be it the TV automatically turning on, the creaking of the door, flapping curtains, and the clattering of cupboards. Just when we feel the writing to be ordinary, Rajavel compensates with a smart pre-interval block. And from here, Housemates singularly focuses on the predicament we are introduced to at the interval.

Darshan and Aarsha fit the bill of the lead characters. The other lead characters, played by the fantastic Kaali Venkat and Vinothini Vaidhyanathan, are good team players. With Darshan, Aarsha and Dheena pulling off the lighter scenes, Kaali and Vinothini shine in the emotionally charged parts.

The drama created by the dissonance between Karthik and Anu over whether their house is haunted is well executed. Big ups to the director for avoiding the showcase of apparitions, and going for familiar scares that makes us believe we are in for a paranormal ride. Even the actors with minimal screen time, like Abdool Lee, were effective.

How well the actors can sell a high concept such as Tesseract in a Tamil pei padam is the yardstick for their performances in films like Housemates, rather than the range of emotions they pull off. And they sell it to us convincingly. Conceptually, the film is helped by the strong emotional core that allows us to accept the scientific concept without asking too many questions.

Director: Rajavel

Cast: Darshan, Aarsha Baiju, Kaali Venkat, Vinothini Vaidyanathan

Another aspect adeptly dealt with by the makers is the decision to unfold the drama indoors. Once again, this helps do away with a bunch of logical and logistical loopholes. This enables singular devotion to unpacking conflicts emerging from the plot point.

Where the narration sags is when the exposition about the happenings in the apartment is countered by pivotal characters denying the same. There is no explanation whatsoever for such contradictory statements. As soon as the film shifts to the actual plotline, thankfully, such convenient writing choices are abandoned abruptly. Also, when both the leads realise fully well what is going on with their families and residencies, they try to make peace with this. Unfortunately, humour created out of this situation overstays its welcome. Chuckles fade out when the narration runs out of oddities to ascribe to the families, and how it affects the others. But before the tonal shift becomes jarrring and unbearable, the narration manages to get back on track.

In most of the horror films, it is hard to escape the 'exorcism trap' and Housemates' strength lies in this subversion, and its conviction in not leaving the end open for a possible franchise exploration. Housemates scores a winner by introducing an idea new to this genre, where the sky is the limit in identifying a resolution. In fact, with such a unique problem, the sky is the limit for the resolution, and it was interesting to see how Rajavel didn't resort to a formulaic finish. In fact, the emotional connection between the different time periods and how it acted as a seal to the portal of convergence were both moving, and adhering to the film's established rules.

Housemates, in a nutshell, is a brave and largely successful attempt by debut director Rajavel to tweak the horror genre to accommodate sci-fi elements while also giving it an emotional treatment, thereby not alienating the Tamil audience.