Horror flick Balloon opens with a special and most unusual sequence involving a...haunted house. Located in Ooty, it has witnessed a couple of strange encounters, one involving a friend of aspiring filmmaker Jeevanandam (Jai).
That is enough to get Jeeva interested in the story. After a disagreement with a producer, he sets forth to “experience” the supernatural – something he doesn’t believe in – to pen a story for the big screen. He gets two assistants (it’s intriguing that an aspiring filmmaker already has them!), his wife Jacqueline (Anjali) and a young nephew to accompany him in this quest.
- Director: Sinish
- Cast: Jai, Anjali, Janani
- Storyline: An aspiring filmmaker in search of a horror story becomes a part of it
Once in Ooty, they go about interviewing people about the house, only to realise that the supernatural isn’t too far away. It’s right there in the resort they’re in – armed with a balloon. Like most ghost tales, it won’t leave them until its wishes are fulfilled...and that involves them too.
Balloon’s first half saunters by largely due to its comedy — Yogi Babu plays Panda, one of Jeeva’s assistants, and has you in splits most of the time. Just when you think the plot picks up, a lengthy flashback (involving Senbagavalli, played by Janani) plays spoilsport, destroying whatever little joy the comedy gave.
While the Jai-Anjali on-screen chemistry — which was the talk of the town during the time of Engaeyum Eppothum — lacks spunk here, composer Yuvan Shankar Raja’s background themes liven up things. But the songs are oddly-placed and hardly work — the composer’s finish, which was the highlight of his many superhits, is sadly missing here.
Director Sinish (who lists a number of English horror films in the opening 'thanks' credit) uses every trick in the ‘how-to-make-a-horror-film’ book to give audiences watching Balloon the spooks, but most of the jump-scares are sequences we’ve become quite familiar with, considering the recent boom of horror flicks. After a point, boredom sets in. The slow motion shots start looking like they were from a TV serial. The sub-plots lose potency. And when the ‘ghost’ starts having conversations and even reasoning with the other characters, you realise that Balloon has run out of air.
