Guardian Review: Protect Yourself from this dud horror comedy
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
If you are looking for some 2024 Indian horror comedies, ‘Stree 2’ is now available to stream on Prime Video, ‘Munjya’ is on Disney Hotstar, and ‘Kakuda’ is on Zee5. Meanwhile, ‘Guardian,’ starring Hansika Motwani, delivers neither laughs nor scares. It’s fine if a horror-comedy movie isn’t spooky, but the least creators can do is give viewers a few fresh, funny jokes.
Directed by Sabari and Guru Saravanan, ‘Guardian’ stars Hansika Motwani as protagonist Aparna, a clumsy, unlucky girl who’s always getting into trouble until, suddenly, one day, as if by magic, everything she truly wishes for in the moment begins to come true—but in weird ways. Eventually, Aparna learns a ghostly entity is looking after her and has an agenda of its own.
About two hours long, the ghostly bits in ‘Guardian’ don’t begin in earnest until after the first hour. Until then, the movie focuses on Aparna’s journey from an unlucky college girl struggling to land a job to a successful new employee at a big construction company run by a sleazy, wealthy creep. New characters keep appearing randomly, there are too many jarring/coincidental occurrences, and a contrived romantic subplot. Aparna gets herself a boyfriend after meeting him through work, and he’s practically forgotten for most parts of the film until the makers realize, “Oh wait, she has a boyfriend too,” so they bring him back for a few scenes toward the end.
From a barely funny comedy in the first half about Aparna’s change in fortunes to a completely non-scary second half about a powerful spirit seeking revenge, ‘Guardian’ is a snooze-fest. At one point, it was hard to judge Hansika Motwani’s performance as Aparna because the script is so harebrained, there’s little she can do to elevate it. Hansika does embody the mannerisms of a possessed, vengeful young spirit with ominous energy; however, the special effects for the ghostly alter-ego are quite awful.
The biggest comedic gag in ‘Guardian’ has very little to do with the primary subplot and involves Azhagu (Tiger Thangadurai), a peon at Aparna’s office, who asks his goon brother-in-law (Motta Rajendran) to start a new contract-killing business. Azhagu plans on convincing Aparna to join them because he notices that whatever she says comes true, even bizarre things that wouldn’t have otherwise been possible. For instance, a supposedly funny scene takes place during an office football match, where Aparna passionately wishes out loud that the losing team would make four back-to-back goals, and they do.
Overall, ‘Guardian’ is an outdated revenge tale wrapped up in the horror-comedy genre, dealing with themes of corruption, harassment at work, and the usual conflict of a few drunk-on-power goons exploiting and oppressing women. Aparna and her guardian ghost teach the villains some deadly lessons, and a few climactic twists help wrap up this bland film.
Rating: 3 on 10. You can watch ‘Guardian’ on JioCinema.
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