Hostel Movie Review

Hostel featuring Ashok Selvan and Priya Bhavani Shankar is a remake of commercially successful Malayalam movie. The film is directed by Sumanth and is produced by R Ravindran of Trident Arts.

The movie opens with a group of friends in the boys hostel enjoying their time. Ashok Selvan comes across Priya Bhavani Shankar, who offers him a huge sum of money, and in return, asks him a favour to get her inside the boys hostel. With the strict warder, a priest (Nasser) and his helper (Munishkanth) remaining vigilant, how Ashok Selvan and his friends manage to take her inside their hostel? Why Priya Bhavani Shankar wants to enter the hostel? What’s the mystery hidden inside the hostel? These questions are answered with the treatment of humour and horror together.

Ashok Selvan’s performance is pretty groovy, and he has adapted himself to the role very well. His energetic enthusiasm and vigorousness is very much prevalent throughout the movie. Priya Bhavani Shankar’s dedication is very much appreciable, and she keeps herself very much devoted to her characterization. Comedian Satish gets a decent scope to perform in this movie. Nasser, as usual, gives his best into the show. Despite the actors giving their best into the show, there is something really disappointing, especially for the ones, who have already seen the original Malayalam version. The combination scenes between Nasser and Munishkanth, who play priest/hostel warden and his assistant is good and enjoyable. Arathangi Nisha as ghost is okay. The first half starts very well with interesting bunch of scenes, but sooner, the lead characters and main drama gets diminished with the sub-plot that doesn’t add value to the movie.

Furthermore, the filmmakers will have to avoid indulging in double entendres if they need family audiences coming to their movies. It looks like the scene crafting has become an easy job for the filmmakers by having such scenes, with a blind intention that it will impress the college students. But after a certain extent, we get annoyed with these stuffs. The musical score by Bobo Sashi is good, but the songs don’t look as perfect placement in screenplay.

The art department needs special mention, but the cinematography could have been yet better.

On the whole, Hostel is a mediocre fare, and doesn’t impress you throughout the show. Although it starts well, it soon joins the league of routine horror-comedy genre movies, where we aren’t able to either laugh for the lame jokes or feel the chill in our spines.