Sai Dharam Tej And Samyuktha Menon’s Telugu Supernatural Thriller ‘Virupaksha’Movie Review

It is simple to dismiss a story that mentions paranormal activity as superstition. The storyteller’s job is to create the story’s universe in such a way that the audience is drawn in, keeps reading to learn more about the unexplained events, and starts to feel sympathy for some of the characters. In the Telugu movie Virupaksha, whose screenplay was penned by Sukumar, director Karthik Varma Dandu painstakingly creates the make-believe world of Rudravanam village. I found myself wondering why a character would risk difficulty by entering the bush at night or why another character would violate a line that is supposed to be sacred while a sequence of unsettling events takes place. The movie begins with a particularly eerie scene about an hour in.

Along with his mother, Surya (Sai Dharam Tej) travels to the village of Rudravanam. The mother interprets their welcome as perhaps being a bad omen. It is ruled out as a possibility in the forests by Surya. The village deity and ritualistic practices, overseen by the temple priest (Sai Chand), are the centre of life in Rudravanam. Surya and Nandini, the daughter of the sarpanch (Rajiv Kanakala), have a hasty and superficially written relationship.