Diya Movie Review: A romantic horror that doesn’t engage or scare you!

Diya was formerly named Karu and that would have been a fitting title to the movie.

Nevertheless we don’t have to worry about a fitting title as the movie has other bigger areas where it fails.

The storyline of Diya seems to be an interesting one. Though we have had various spins of horror stories in tamil cinema, Diya is somewhat new!

We have the ghost of a foetus who is taking revenge. The main let down in the movie is the execution.

Vijay chooses to reveal any possible suspense or engaging factor in the movie right in the beginning so we are left to just watch the movie as it goes.

This means we are not engaged or compelled to attach ourselves to the movie throughout.

A teenage couple, Krishna (Naga Shourya) and Thulasi (Sai Pallavi) gets pregnant. They realise that they are not yet ready for the responsibility and they also have other career plans.

The parents of the couple are definitely not happy with this teenage pregnancy as well.

So they decide to abort the baby. They do so. And after five years the couple tie the knot. But we don’t have a “they lived happily ever after” story after that.

Thulasi has not forgotten about the unborn child and updates a diary in the name of the child – Diya (Baby Veronika).

The family members and the doctor who did the abortion die one after the other. Though all those deaths seem to be accidents Thulasi senses something strange.

The spirit of the unborn child is on the killing spree and the father of the child Krishna is also in the hit list.

How Thulasi tackles the emotions and tries to save her husband forms the story.

Sai Pallavi as Thulasi has given her very best. If Diya had been a more engaging film than it is, this could have been a wonderful entry for her to tamil cinema.

But Sai Pallavi’s awesome acting seems to be the only thing that tries to save the movie. There are a couple of moments where she delivers fantastic, detailed expressions.

For a movie in the horror genre there are no scares as you would expect. And there are no twists or suspenses.

We also have a few questions like why would the ghost wait for 5 years until the couple ties a knot to start taking revenge?

There is no mention about the gender of the baby that they aborted – and the pregnancy was terminated not because of the gender. So why is the director trying to push a message about gender killing?

Nevertheless, Sam CS has given life to the movie with his BG. The music fits really well with the genre of the movie and keeps us in the mood.

Baby Veronika does her job pretty neatly.

R. J. Balaji’s character will give you some laughs. But they all seem totally out of context in the movie that deals with a serious subject.

Naga Shourya definitely doesn’t fit into his character.

All the characters have been penned weakly so we are unable to relate or connect with them throughout the movie.

Having said that, if you would like to watch an emotional horror movie and if you can handle some boredom, you can go for it.