Connect

Over the last decade, we've seen the 'exorcism' template overused in Hollywood. As a horror enthusiast, it has become one of my least favourite sub-genres at this point. In India - especially Tamil cinema - such films are still far and few. Which is why there's always a fair bit of excitement when a genre director like Ashwin Saravanan (whose Maya I liked and Game Over I did not like) decides to tell an exorcism tale centered around the COVID-19 lockdown. He and co-writer Kaavya Ramkumar (now, his better half) paint the picture of a well-off Christian family comprising Susan (Nayanthara), Dr. Joseph (Vinay Rai), their daughter Anna (Haniya Nafisa) and Arthur (Sathyaraj, playing Susan's dad), coming to terms with Dr. Joseph's sudden passing due to COVID exposure.

The horror premise certainly exudes promise. It is a stark reminder of the real horrors of the first lockdown when healthcare warriors really risked their lives to save others. The situation of a mother getting stuck at home with her possessed daughter is what you could call unique. But the writing is super derivative. It does nothing novel with the exorcism aspect, and heavily borrows from James Wan's The Conjuring and Rob Savage's Host. Also, we don't see Susan feeling a sense of urgency even when the writing's on the wall. As ironic as it may sound, there's a disconnect between Susan and the audiences. Anupam Kher's late entry does nothing but remind you of the dozens of priests we've seen in Western counterparts.

That said, some of the scares are solidly crafted and they're greatly helped by the impressive soundscape. Manikantan Krishnamachary's cinematography is also pretty good, given that much of the film plays out over phone screens.

The film is clever and easily the best horror film made in India in the last ten years. Aswin Saravanan, Vignesh Shivan, and their team have created a story that parallels a demonic possession plot within a doctor's family, a COVID lockdown, and a home footage zoom call. The cherry on top was the stellar star-studded cast and performance. The soundtrack, effects, and editing were all fantastic.

I appreciate the experience, team.

Please disregard the negative reviews and ratings; the movie is unquestionably worth seeing. The horror film Connect is well-made and technically sound. It has all the appropriate jump scares and creepy elements you would expect from a horror film and keeps you interested the entire time. It is such a welcome change from what you typically see in Indian horror films. The team deserves praise.👍

Tightly based on the lockdown period and hence the plot demands it to be filmed only inside one single home which is the biggest drawback of this film since the monotonous nature of the film drags us too much and makes it really unlikeable.

Most of the scenes are loosely copied from tens of exorcism-based films and present nothing new in terms of the content.

The film had an opportunity to make it interesting with some twists & turns in the screenplay but it was missed and probably this is the best they can come up with if it was really made during the lockdown times, the time during which all of us were really going into depression sort of a thing.

Overall, it's not even worth it for a one-time watch but you can try if you can so much time to kill.

Being a Tamil movie, most of the dialogues are kept in English for only the elite audience. Keeping that aside, there is nothing new in this movie if you have watched Exorcist or similar movies involving exorcism.

Also the timing of the movie is very late. This should have been made when there were lockdowns and ambulance noises sounding all through the day.

There is absolutely no real story or connection that one could get with the movie. Just because someone has a camera and call sheet of big actors, such movies are made copying yestee years block buster Hollywood movies. Total waste of time.

My friends made plan to watch this movie. I didn't even knew that this movie was out. This was my first experience of watching a horror thriller in cinema. The movie was good but there was nothing new in the story. Yes, they used the concept of lockdown and quarantine which made the story little different but the overall concept was old one. I felt that that movie was heavily inspired from Hollywood movie, The Exorcist. The runtime and pacing helps the movie from becoming boring.

Overall, it was a good movie but I think it could have been little bit better and it would have been better it would have been released on OTT.