Cast: Chanti, Krishnudu, Vimala Raman, Harsha Vardhan, Archana, Shashank
Director: Vegesna Satish
Ratings: 1.5/5
No content, no screenplay...nothing good!
Making remakes is not new in the Telugu film industry and director Vegesna Satish's 'Kullu Manali' is the perfect example. A bad rip-off of Hollywood blockbuster 'I Know What You Did Last Summer' is how this film can be aptly described as.
'Kullu Manali' is essentially a murder mystery based on the back drop of the hill station. 7 friends from Hyderabad are on a trip and one by one each of them is being killed by a serial killer. After a few murders, the remaining friends decide to investigate on who is the killer. The rest of the story is how they save their lives and find out the motive behind the killings.
There is no novelty that the director is trying to portray when it comes to the story and more so, a good screenplay can also take a bad or clichéd story to another level. But Satish fails at both. As far as the half a dozen actors of the film are concerned, only a few do a decent job and one of them is Chanti who was last seen in SMS.
Vimala Raman also puts in best of her efforts and should be commended for that but if the film lacks content, there is not much that can be done. The rest of the supporting cast is strictly okay.
The background score is another saving grace of the thriller as it is apt for the film. Music is good but the songs seemed like a forceful addition. Cinematography could have been better. But there are been-there-seen-that scenes and dialogues that fail to make the murder mystery as engaging as it should be.
As they say, these days to survive, a film needs content and that is where 'Kullu Manali' fails, at the basic plot and also at its execution.