Agadha Movie Review:
There’s something interesting about Agadha right from the beginning. It doesn’t take the usual horror-comedy route that we’ve seen quite a lot in Telugu cinema. M.S. Raju tries to make a serious supernatural thriller with divine powers, black magic, spirits and an ancient evil force at the centre of it.
And honestly, the setup is pretty intriguing.
The story revolves around Mahadevi (Kamakshi Bhaskarla), a spiritually gifted woman who gets pulled into a disturbing mystery after the death of her cousin Mahima (Ulka Gupta). What initially looks like a suicide slowly turns into something much darker. There’s a mysterious entity called Agadha, strange happenings around the family and a supernatural battle that gradually comes into the picture.
The first half takes its time building this world. Sometimes it works, sometimes it feels like the movie is taking a little too long to get where it wants to go. There are enough questions to keep you watching though — especially about what Agadha actually is and why this particular family is being targeted.
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Kamakshi Bhaskarla is easily one of the biggest positives. She plays Mahadevi with a quiet intensity rather than going overboard, and that suits the character. She carries a good portion of the film on her shoulders. Ulka Gupta is decent, while Shravan Reddy also fits well into the darker side of the story.
Where Agadha really scores is in its technical work. The forest locations, dark visuals and cave sequences give the film the atmosphere it needs. The background score also does a lot of heavy lifting. There are scenes where the sound design creates more tension than the actual writing.
But that’s also where the problem lies.
The film looks and sounds like a much more gripping horror movie than what the screenplay eventually delivers. The basic supernatural conflict isn’t particularly new, and once the mystery starts getting explained, some of the twists become fairly predictable. The second half has a few interesting ideas, including the film’s treatment of mysticism and the supernatural, but the narrative doesn’t always maintain the tension established earlier.
I also felt the movie could have gone much deeper with its characters. There’s an interesting mythology underneath all this, but the screenplay sometimes seems more interested in showing the world than making us emotionally invested in the people trapped inside it. Because of that, some of the supposedly scary moments don’t hit as hard as they should.
Still, Agadha deserves credit for attempting a relatively straight-faced supernatural thriller instead of turning everything into comedy. The visual presentation is good, Kamakshi Bhaskarla gives the film a solid centre, and there are a few sequences that genuinely create an eerie mood.
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On Zee5, the movie may work better for viewers who enjoy slow-burn supernatural mysteries and don’t mind a somewhat familiar storyline. Just don’t go in expecting nonstop scares or a tightly written horror thriller.
Overall, Agadha has the atmosphere, the visuals and a promising supernatural concept. What it lacks is a consistently gripping screenplay to turn those ingredients into a truly scary experience.
A decent one-time supernatural thriller, especially if you’re into dark folklore, mysticism and horror without the comedy.
