Shaji Kailas’ brand of cinema has been a favourite for those cine-goers who celebrated the larger-than-life heroes taking centre stage with lengthy, pompous monologues, heavily choreographed action sequences and unwarranted camera angles and shots. But success has been long overdue for the director who has delivered some of the biggest blockbusters in Malayalam cinema. After a series of misfires at the box office — despite Kaduva and Kappa that celebrated alpha male heroes being declared hits — the director is back at the marquee with Hunt , headlined by Bhavana , with whom he is collaborating after the 2005 release, Chinthamani Kolacase .
Shaji has added supernatural horror to his oeuvre with the movie scripted by Nikhil Anand. Bhavana plays Dr Keerthi, a postgraduate student specialising in forensic medicine. A bold and outspoken individual, Keerthi is left with too much on her plate when the corpse of a woman (Aditi Ravi) is recovered from a river stuffed in a concrete-filled bin.
Soon she starts feeling someone’s presence around her, forcing her to get involved in finding the identity of the woman and the circumstances that led to her murder. For a change, the director has gone for a woman protagonist this time and there is enough meat in the initial scenes to keep the audience interested in the narrative, thanks to the pace of the scenes and the build-up to the situations. Bhavana in a scene from ‘Hunt’| Photo Credit:@GOODWILLENTERTAINMENTS/YouTube But that�.