Black Dahlia Review

A gang of fearless high profile funky girls and their misadventures had been the main theme of quite a few numbers of films in the recent times. Closely following the likes of the `Red Chillies', `Chinthamani Colacase' and Hollywood hits like `I Know What You Did Last Summer' and `Posers' is, seasoned actor turned director Adv Babu Raj's debut flick `Black Dahlia'. Titled after the famous mystery work, the movie qualifies as a well made thriller, though you won't see much in difference from the earlier mentioned prototypes. The ambitious thriller succeeds in maintaining its non- prediction values till the last reel, but suffers from below par performances from a reasonably fresh cast of newcomers and inevitable comparisons with the similar stuffs.
 
A group of teenage girls from affluent families, studying in a private medical college, after a hard night partying, hits and runs over someone on the road when returning to their hostels. These bright -sociopath teens conspire to keep away the clues to the murder, by hiding all the associated elements including the hit and run car and the corpse. But within a few days, the scary nights starts for the group, as one after the other goes on murdered by a serial killer. The group of cops led by C I Anwar (Babu Raj)gets into trouble as they tries for ''over the board ways'', to grab the murderer. As a great help to the girls who are now into paranoia about what will happen to them, arrives firebrand D I G Daisy Wilfred (Vaani Viswanath) a strong willed officer all set to solve the case that left the community in clueless fear. The movie's highlight is definitely its suspense over the serial killer, which cannot be cracked by any normal minds.
 
Suresh Gopi appears as a forensic psychiatrist Dr. Adi Kesav, in just a couple of scenes including the opening and concluding sequences where a serial killer is brought for his examination. And through the flashback, all is told, well and good with the support of heavily trimmed shots edited by Don Max and loudest background scores by Raajamani.  A load of fresh names enjoy most of the screen time, though Vani Viswanath, Baburaj, Vijayraghavan and Saadiq plays their part to hold the movie together from splits. The first scripting by the director does hold the power for a watch- through, though without any mentionable highlights. The songs by Sayan Anwar like ''May Masam'' are Hummable, while P Sukumar also does his part behind the camera to make it an average watchable stuff.
 
If you are expecting anything new or profound to be added into the genre, with `Black Dahlia', you may be disappointed but the movie definitely offers enough atmosphere to spend an engaging two plus hours ...Go for it...if you have nothing big to do.