Producers- Offbeat Films and S .Originals in association with Mango Mass Media

Director- Kiran Reddy

Star Cast-Rakesh Galebhe, Lakshmi Bharadwaj, Bhargava Poludasu and Harsha

Genre- Psychotic Thriller

Rating- Jyothi Venkatesh

Revolting & Flummoxing!

Platform- Amazon Prime Video

Jyothi Venkatesh

Gatham is the latest direct-to-streamer Telugu film to be set in the United States directly streamed into Amazon Prime Video by passing a theatrical release. Gatham’s foray into a typically American thriller sub-genre – a couple trapped with a possible psychopath in an isolated cabin – makes it better suited to its setting, but only just.

The film entices you when it opens with an aerial view of a snow-covered terrain in which two people scurry for their lives, only to succumb. Within minutes there are other snapshots of crime, following which one of the primary characters wakes up in a hospital and is told that he has suffered brain damage and memory loss.

The film revolves around Rishi (Rakesh Galebhe), who loses his memory in an accident, and Adithi (Lakshmi Bharadwaj), who claims to be his girlfriend. Rishi wakes up from an accident forgetting everything about his past. His girlfriend Adithi (Poojitha Kurapathi) takes him to meet his father but circumstances lead them to a house in the middle of nowhere, where live a bearded burly Telugu gent and his apparently cranky bearded old son Harsha (Harsha). Arjun (Bhargava Poludasu) seems to be helpful and welcoming, offering the couple bed, shelter, boarding and also mango thokku in his cabin in the woods and shields them from his son. However, it does not at all take time for you as well as the couple to sense that something’s not quite right with the pair.

While Gatham begins, as just yet another run-of-the-mill thriller which sees a couple fighting for survival as they’re stuck with a bunch of perverts in an isolated cabin, on their way to visit the boy’s father, within a few minutes, the plot takes a very bizarre twist and turn with Bhargava’s character seemingly turning out to be revolting, and you end up uncomfortable about watching a film that seems to progress nowhere from the word go.

As far as the performances go, all I can say is that Rakesh Galebhe acts as well as sounds a little like Vijay Deverakonda thanks to his voice and diction, while Poojitha as his girl friend Aditi looks confused most of the time and also goes overboard and her performance leaves a lot to be desired on the whole. Bhargava Poludasu rises above his ill conceived role and impresses while Harsha as his son does not even make an attempt to act as he looks menacing when you look at his face itself.

What I like about the film with its own twists and turns which are a necessary part of a psychotic thriller is Kiran’s screenplay which wastes no time with unnecessary deviations from the main theme or various additional characters and sticks to the main theme. The way Kiran directs the film, using Rishi’s memory-loss as a narrative tool is indeed clever, though it may flummox the audiences at times and even sound illogical.

To sum up, all said and done, Gatham is a tackily made small budgeted film by a bunch of amateurs who just want to make movies for fun, with Kiran Reddy who is making his debut as a director with no logic or reason by just doing a horrible copy paste of a Hollywood B grade film.