The sequel to Charmme’s successful sojourn into horror, Mantra 2 is as empty as the haunted house and the redundant close-up shots of its lead protagonists. The lack of a serious effort to narrate a story is apparent and you are henceforth only left with the basic cardboard elements of a horror template, the meows, the silences, the gradual sounds of the door being shut and reopened besides a series of mysterious murders.
Provided you desire to think beyond the horror in Mantra 2 and drive anything noteworthy from here, there’s a lazy snapshot of the software industry in store. Mantra leaves her hostel in Visakhapatnam to step into the city for a job and lives in a surprisingly luxurious mansion. You’re left reasonably surprised with a thread devoted to workplace harassment, which happens to be the only trace of genuineness.
Otherwise, there’s a handy excuse for a party song, modelled on the ‘Maha Maha’ number in its prequel and a famous track from the Hindi film Son of Sardaar . The women, meanwhile, consistently heaping praises on the supposedly drop-dead gorgeous looks of Charmme also devote a good measure of time on the lookout for boyfriends.
The second hour completely unfolds in a house and the narrative loses the little direction it possessed in the earlier half. There’s a painful thread on homosexuals to add insult to injury. The performances are unworthy including an out of form Charmme despite the best of efforts from senior actors like Tanikella Bharani to hold fort. The scares riding on the obviously caricatured background score, reminding you of Ramgopal Verma’s faulty experiments with the genre, only turn out to be a recipe for unintentional laughter. The heart of the story is significantly similar to the prequel and keeping aside a single twist, the film never rises above a fabricated model piece of horror.
Mantra 2
Cast : Charmme Kaur, Chethan, Tanikella Bharani, Rahul Dev
Director : S V Sateesh
Plot : A techie living in a mansion discovers hidden truths about her new home
Bottomline : Generic horror
