Apsara movie review: Syam Krishnan’s directorial venture fails at every step of filmmaking

Apsara is a survival thriller released directly on the OTT platform Saina Play. As regards the storyline, Alan and Akhila — a young couple — go on a bike ride and while returning home, they have a narrow escape after being hit by a car. They visit a mechanic’s shop to get the bike fixed, and then decide to watch a film to while away their time.

Inside the theatre, they encounter a couple of mischief-makers. How they escape from their clutches forms the crux of this movie.

Apsara is the name of the theatre. The storyline has all potential to make a decent low-budget thriller. But the writing is pitiful with badly-stilted dialogues. Hence, all that we get are bland characters and scenes.

Where does one start?

Apsara is a film that completely fails at every step of filmmaking. The trailer was quite impressive, though. Whoever edited it deserves a huge applause for presenting something so appealing out of utter scratch.

The movie is a survival thriller drama sound-designed, sound-edited, visualised, edited, written, and directed by Syam Krishnan. He has also composed two songs.

Nevertheless, the problem with the small-budget indie Malayalam movies targeting OTT is that they make them as if they are for YouTube. Many makers still don’t know the difference. This is the very reason we are coming across a lot of badly-conceived films on small OTT platforms.

Consistently awful

In Apsara, we can see the makers’ struggle to put the idea within the budget they had. But there is not a single attempt to give something fresh. Given its low budget, the film is a joke. It is surprisingly and consistently an awful film.

The movie moves at the speed of rock. While watching, I felt that the first 20 minutes were the most lacklustre 20 minutes of this year. Then, the premise kicks in and it becomes ridiculous.

Every character makes the worst possible choices. It leaves you feeling annoyed and irritated. Poor performances by the actors make it even worse to sit through.

The negative characters are hysterically, historically, and gloriously funny. They are unintentionally hilarious throughout. The acting is uniformly terrible.

Apsara basically makes Santhosh Pandit’s Krishnanum Radhayum seem like the Devasuram.

Enough said; if I have to watch the worst survival thriller, I still wouldn’t try to watch this again. The movie is completely plotless and boring.