Jatadhara movie review: Sonakshi Sinha, Sudheer Babu conjure up a film which needed more magic, more scares

The blueprint for many mystical thrillers — from Deviputhrudu to Karthikeya to the recent Virupaksha— has stayed the same. With time, a sceptic transforms into a theist in the backdrop of a supernatural experience. Jatadhara, directed by Venkat Kalyan and Abhishek Jaiswal, gives its protagonist, Shiva (Sudheer Babu), a funkier exterior — that of a ghost hunter who does not believe in ghosts.

Shiva works in the corporate sector by day with his friend. When they are not at their desks, they are in pursuit of spirits at haunted houses. The film opens with a sequence establishing Shiva’s psyche at a conference on paranormal activities. He is into ghost-hunting only to prove ghosts do not exist. He believes fear is the beast that needs to be tamed, not the ghost.

Each time Shiva enters a new house, he keeps asking the spirit for a signal of its presence, as if it were his childhood friend. Expectedly, he falls for a god-fearing archaeologist, Sithara (Divya Khosla Kumar), who tries to alter his belief system. He begins having strange visions every night. After a couple of close shaves with death, a revelation about his past leads him to the tainted village of Rudraram.