‘Aranmanai 3’ review: A horror-comedy that takes too many detours and ends up directionless

Sundar C’s third installment in the ‘Aranmanai’ franchise succeeds neither in scaring us nor in making us laugh

At one point in Sundar C’s Aranmanai 3, a pair of grey cracked hands holds Abhishek’s (Yogi Babu) and Sigamani’s (Vivekh) hands. Abhishek and Sigamani know the house they currently inhabit is haunted. Yet they choose to hold hands with the spirit to play ‘Ring a Ring o’ Roses’. One of them sings incorrectly, “Ringa a Ring o’ Moses”. Another character corrects them, “Ayyo, adhu ‘Moses’ illa, ‘roses’ (It’s not ‘Moses’, it’s ‘roses’)”. The person sitting next to me laughed hardly, slapping his thigh. I looked at him with a bit of envy. I wished I got even a smidgen of that enjoyment from the film.

Horror-comedy, as a genre, is odd as — to borrow Vimal’s line from Kalakalappu (also directed by Sundar C) — a combination of sakkara pongal and vada curry. If the film uses horror elements as props to make you laugh, that is fine. The Scary Movie series do that, for instance. But a film that sets out to scare its audience and make them laugh ends up treading a tightrope. And, most Tamil films do not manage this balancing act.

Aranmanai 3 does not, either. In one of the scenes, the vengeful spirit uses its telekinetic powers to murder Jyothi (Rashi Khanna), the protagonist. In another, it fools around with Abhishek and Sigamani. How do we, then, get scared by it? The film attempts to evoke terror with hackneyed horror elements (eyes moving in a portrait, pregnant silences broken by a demonic figure’s blood-curdling shriek, kids interacting with an invisible entity, etc.) But these scenes are constantly interjected with extended comedic set pieces that are disjointed from the plot.