Bellamkonda Sreenivas after mass actioners failed to set screens on fire with his previous few films. He is now testing his luck with a horror entertainer Kishkindhapuri. The film is directed by Koushik Pegallapati and is releasing on 12 Sep 2025. Kishkindhapuri OTT rights have been bagged for a huge sum by Zee 5. Let us see how the film thrilled movie lovers.
Kishkindhapuri story revolves around youngsters tries to explore an abandoned haunted house and get interested in an abandoned radio station and where this leads to from rest of developments.
Raghava (Bellamkonda Sreenivas), Mythri (Anupama Parameswaran) decides to go on a ghost walking tour to Kishkindhapuri along with Vihari (Hyper Aadi), Murugesh (Srikanth Iyengar), Sumith( Sudarshan), Athreya (Bhadram) and the shocking experiences they undergo and how they are connected to Bhushana Varma (Tanikella Bharani), Priest (Makarand Deshpande), Vishwavavu and Suvarnamaya Radio Station.
Bellamkonda Sai Sreenivas did justice to his role. He performed well and showed good screenpresence and body langauge. He delivered dialogues according to the situation and enacted stunts to entertain masses. However he should still improve on his expressions and emotions at crucial stages.
Anupama Parameswaran is good in her role. She did what was required of her and played accordingly. There are many other actors but they didnot get much screen presence. Hyper Aadi, Srikanth Iyengar, Bhadram, Sudarshan and others performed well in their limited roles. Tanikella Bharani and Makarand Deshpande are ok in their roles but all of them are under utilised.
Kishkindhapuri story is readied by Koushik Pegallapati. He tried to show Bellamkonda Sreenivas in a different manner and came up with a horror thriller. He started the narration in the right earnest and generates interest at once. However after the first ten minutes, the romantic track and the hero and his friends tryst to take people for a ride trying to scare them with their own haunted houses tour settings, dips the pace of the narration.
But once that is done and they enter the Suvarnamaya and the Radio Station, narration picks up pace and the steady and racy screenplay keeps viewers glued.The first half thus ends on a decent note with a good interval twist setting the tone for the second half.
Many expected the second half to be more racy and filled with new and interesting twists. However, though few twists excites, the flashback episode goes for a toss with few illogical scenes and the climax looked predictable offering nothing new. The film ends in a routine manner with the hint to the sequel which many feel unnecessary.
The director might have drawn inspiration from the Ramayana as the names Vishwavaru and the mother sentiment showing her as evil in the end and the names of Raghava and Mythri of the lead pair setting the tone. For all these obsession, the director failed to use them in an interesting and thrilling manner as he failed to connect the emotional chords.
There are not many songs in the film. One romantic song and a mother song is situational. However they infact impacted the flow of the narration. Chaitan Bharadwaj created a good impact with the background music. The background score elevated the scenes.
Cinematography of Chinmay Salaskar added value to the narration. He used the camera angles to perfection and gave a natural and realistic feel to the proceedings. Niranjan Devaramane's editing is quite good. Except for few drags here and there, he did a good job. Production values are good.
Altogether, Kishkindhapuri turns out to be an average horror thriller. Director Koushik Pegallapati promised much and the story had scope to take viewers on a thrilling and horrific ride. However, he failed to explore the theme to the optimum as he failed to make use of various characters. To the fop of it, he failed to come up with a powerful flashback to connect chords with the viewers. The screenplay turned out to be topsy turvy and the cinematic liberties he has taken failed to make an impact. Little finetuning of the script and the story would have taken the film to another level. Considering all these aspects, Cinejosh goes with a 2.25 rating for Kishkindhapuri.