‘Jatadhara’ movie review: Sudheer Babu, Sonakshi Sinha’s mystical thriller is dated and amateurish

Shiva works in the corporate sector by day with his friend. When they are not at their desks, they are in pursuit of spirits at haunted houses. The film opens with a sequence establishing Shiva’s psyche at a conference on paranormal activities. He is into ghost-hunting only to prove ghosts do not exist. He believes fear is the beast that needs to be tamed, not the ghost.

Each time Shiva enters a new house, he keeps asking the spirit for a signal of its presence, as if it were his childhood friend. Expectedly, he falls for a god-fearing archaeologist, Sithara (Divya Khosla Kumar), who tries to alter his belief system. He begins having strange visions every night. After a couple of close shaves with death, a revelation about his past leads him to the tainted village of Rudraram.

The story is tied to an intriguing backstory, pointing to lanke bindalu (wealth pots), where people guarded their wealth underground (from burglars and naysayers) using a ritual. The evil force Shiva needs to confront is a dhana pisachini (a demon of wealth). At one level, the film is a cautionary tale about the greed for material wealth, inviting ill luck to a family.

Everything that should have worked in the film’s favour — elements such as ghost-hunting, the scientific mumbo-jumbo around spirits, the fable-like backstory on materialistic desires, all leading to Shiva’s transformation — falls flat on its head. Revisiting a time-tested premise, there is no conviction in the execution. An air of superficiality and indifference consistently envelops it.

Sonakshi Sinha and Sudheer Babu in the film
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

The screenplay lacks any sort of structure, trying to hammer the same point about Shiva’s philosophy time and again, leading nowhere. The writing feels like an exaggerated discourse, glorifying dogmas and superstitions. The treatment is painfully generic, and the performances are uninspiring and rehearsed. There is no authenticity to the setting at all.

The film sinks deeper post-intermission, where Shiva’s twisted family history comes to the fore (the flashback just does not end). There are lores around lemons, black magic rituals, sorcerers, rice vessels soaked in blood, animal sacrifices, and cannibalism. The staging is repulsive, and it feels like the directors forgot to say ‘cut’ between the shots.

The least the makers could have done is to lend some emotional heft to the thread linking Shiva to his biological parents. The suddenness of his transformation is hard to digest. The absence of a good composer is particularly felt in the climax. The consecration of the Shiva idols and the tandavam later are too mechanical to leave any impact.

Sudheer Babu looks lost and clueless as the film progresses, and there is hardly a solid performance to cover ground or do some damage control. Divya Khosla Kumar’s extended appearance lacks meat and strong context. The biggest disappointment of all is Sonakshi Sinha (in her Telugu debut), dressed as if she were shooting for a jewellery endorsement, mouthing bizarre lines.

Shilpa Shirodkar’s comeback in Telugu cinema is equally disappointing. Rajeev Kanakala and Jhansi’s casting as Shiva’s parents is inept. Pradeep Rawat’s jarring hairdo and styling are a cause of embarrassment. Subhalekha Sudhakar (as the spiritual guru Neelakantha Sastri) hams endlessly about myths and astrological predictions, sounding like the promotional AVs out of a film pre-release event.

The attempt to shoot the film simultaneously in Hindi and Telugu leads to several lip-sync issues. It is mounted and edited shabbily. The production design is extremely minimalistic, and the costumes are out of place. It pains to see that such a regressive story endorsing such primitive ideas and beliefs has found takers, even in 2025.

Before the protagonist Shiva finds answers to his questions, the viewer is led to another mystery in Jatadhara: what exactly were they trying to do?