Erida

Creating content during the pandemic has been the new challenge for filmmakers in the last couple of years, and we have seen too many single-location thrillers and dramas in this phase. Erida, the new movie from director VK Prakash scripted by his frequent collaborator YV Rajesh is one more to that list of movies, and sadly it’s a really tough one to sit through. With terrible dialogues and a script that can’t hold your interest at any point, Erida fails to create any impact.

The movie is about Anu. A young woman who is married to someone of her dad’s age. Shankar, aka Shanky, her husband, is addicted to gambling and the reason they are together is that Shankar thinks Anu is his lucky charm. After striking gold in a match against his business rival, Shankar leaves for Bangalore, leaving Anu alone at his home for one night. With all the illegal money at that house, the night becomes a bit of trouble for Anu with the arrival of some uninvited guests. How she deals with that is what we see in Erida.

Towards the end of the movie, we hear Anu saying this line to compare herself to the Greek goddess of hate, Erida. Okay, that line is definitely catchy, and maybe that would have been the germ of the idea behind the film. But the movie is so bad that you will find it extremely difficult to link what you saw with this Erida concept. There is a part towards the end where we see a master plan getting revealed through flashback sequences. And you will feel absolutely no thrill simply because of how clumsy the script was till that point. They are trying to mislead the viewers by creating subplots and background stories to characters, and honestly, it was only dragging the movie to a messier space.

The most unbearable part about this movie is the acting. Samyuktha Menon is fine in terms of looking like this desirable young lady. But when it comes to delivering lines, she just can’t give a convincing performance. The acting in the climax part of the movie reminded me of her performance in Kalki. As this eccentric megalomaniac, Nassar looks perfect for the role, but the writing is just not giving him any chance. Actor Kishore is also trying to give his best, but his lines are so bad that you will feel that they are all mocking the audience.

VK Prakash is trying to cover up the flaws in the script by making the movie look visually enticing. But after a point, even that trick isn’t helping the film hold the viewer’s interest. The script’s inability to acknowledge the audience’s sensibility is the major demerit of this movie. Instead of creating layers to the characters to achieve a certain depth to their actions, YV Rajesh simply drags the film to a conclusion we were all kind of predicting. I still can’t figure out the purpose of Dharmajan’s character in this movie.

Erida is a bland thriller with mediocre writing and underwhelming performances. It had a premise that could explore all the grey emotions. But the film from VK Prakash is a hollow portrait of a woman who looked for love and eventually became the goddess of hate.