Saithan opened to a full house despite a rainy day, thanks to the expectations built around the film and thanks to the actors previous commitment that earned him great fan following. Vijay Antony’s Saithan is directed by debutant Pradeep Krishnamoorthy.
The director gives credits to sujatha novel Aa at the very beginning. He mentions that only half of the movie is inspired from the novel. The movie impresses us halfway the part which is inspired from the novel is gripping enough to make us wait for the post interval scenes where the real story unfolds and the rest of the movie where the director decided to try his hand at writing is given for a toss.
Saithan is the story of a newly married IT employee who is tormented by the voices that he keeps hearing that he claims is coming from inside his head.
The entire first half depends mostly on the protagonist and Vijay Antony has aced his role. After we get a pre interval twist the well-crafted first half of the movie makes us sit through the second half. What a normal movie goer would expect is an element of surprise and that is what sujatha would have given us too. What the director actually decides to give us instead is a generic story that ends up not only in spoiling the climax but the entire premise in which it was built on.
Saithan just like the novel it was based on deals with previous lives and ESP elements but the problem here is that Saithan again becomes one another movie which falls prey Tamil cinema elements.It is only minutes after the story begins to unfold do we realize that this is one another spoilt story that has been tried since time immemorial in kollywood.
Arundhati Nair scores at a lot of places and her performance is at par with Vijay Antony. If there is another thing that makes us applaud for the movie then it would be the music. The music becomes psychedelic at times and even a few songs in which Vijay Antony has himself rendered his music are worth listening to. A generic duet in the beginning stands out of the place though.
Y G Mahendra, Doctor and Meera Krishnan are convincing in their roles.
