SILENCE

Produced by People Media Factory in association with Kona Film Corporation and directed by Hemant Madhukar, Silence is shot simultaneously in Telugu, Tamil, and English, starring Madhavan, Anushka Shetty and Anjali in lead roles, with Michael Madsen, Shalini Pandey Subbaraju and Srinivas Avasarala playing supporting roles. The film is now released in Telugu, Tamil, English, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi on Prime Video.

Silence begins on a lot of ways most horror?-thrillers begin. A house in the middle of nowhere where eerie things happen and soon comes to be known as the haunted house. Beginning with Anjali's voice-over, it gets sometime to adjust to her deliberately mellowed down baritone since we are usually used to her sprightly voice.

Anjali (Mahalakshmi alias Maha) is introduced as Seattle Police Department homicide detective, probing the mysterious death of celebrated violinist Anthony Gonsalves, played by Madhavan while his mute and deaf fiancee Sakshi (Anushka Shetty) is witness to the incident.

Maha refuses to believe that it's the handiwork of a ghost (Thank goodness for small mercies in life - We'd really hate detectives pinning the blame on supernatural elements). Amidst the chaos is the mysterious disappearance of Sakshi's best friend Sonali soon after the former's engagement with Anthony. What binds all of these characters forms the rest of the story.

Almost all the actors exhibit decent acting skills, however, it is the screenplay, which is the biggest let-down. There are a few twists that really make you sit up and once again take notice of what's happening on the screen but again they are far and few in between.

Coming to the performances, Anushka looks alluring, right from the word 'go'. Maddy exudes charm and grace. We are seeing Maddy and Anushka back on screen after 14 long years and yet, the chemistry is just there. Crackling as ever.

One of the flipsides of the movie is also the distinctive Telugu flavour you experience at times - perhaps it is to do with the fact that most actors or at least the supporting cast are people you are more familiar to have seen in Telugu movies.

There was a decent amount of buzz for the movie over the casting of Michael Madsen as Chief of Police, SPD, Richard Dawkins. However, we soon, find to our dismay that he is no more than the stereotypical, arrogant pain-in-the-backside detective you even see in American movies. Bringing a little bit of novelty to his character at least, could have turned in the charm for Silence.

Though the songs are soothing, they really don't seem to add much value to the proceedings and most of them fall under melody and don't really have any variety to them. Perhaps, Gopi Sundar had to work within the constraints of the genre. Shaneil Deo's cinematography is pleasant.