Renu (Tejaswi) is a medical student who opts to stay back alone at her big villa while her parents attend her friend’s wedding. Vishal (Navdeep) is her boyfriend who is an easy going guy and loves to scare and tease Renu all the time. Both Renu and Vishal come back after watching a horror film and Vishal casually kicks off a stone of superstitions left away by the previous tenants of the villa. While Vishal prefers to take it easy and continues to scare and tease Renu, she suddenly starts feeling abnormal sounds and paranormal happenings. Adding to the horror, she even has a couple of scary dreams and when she narrates them to Navdeep, he tries convincing her that the happenings are her sheer hallucination. On the contrary, the scary eventful dreams continue to happen. So, how did Vishal and Renu encounter this problem and fight against the extra natural forces forms the crux of the story.
Tejaswi: She has made the essential cut as an actor with this film. She looked glamorous as well. Though certain expressions of her looked banal, on a whole, this film looked as a perfect thrust to her career.
Navdeep: He is a livewire both onscreen and off-screen. He pulls off this character with ease and fills the gaps in the film with his comic timing.
The rest of the cast did a decent job in making the film believable and tried their best to add to the horror.
Ram Gopal Varma, the so called “master” at horrors and thrillers again claims this film to be based on some real life incidents occurred in Bengaluru some time back. While the series of horrific events are the most predictable ones, the reason and logic go dumb most of the times. Amidst an unconvincing plot line, clichéd narration and characters, this film’s sound emerges as the real hero of the film. Except the weak-hearted, if at all this film could scare the living daylights out of you; it is because of the sound design of the film.
First Half: The most hyped first 20mins of the film lack luster and the series of repetitive events might slightly take you off track but few jolts and shocks will amuse you for sure.
Interval Bang: This is certainly unpredictable but might not actually give you goose bumps.
Second Half: This segment successfully takes you along with few more clichéd events but the last 20mins keeps you amused with yet another unnatural twist in the most unconvincing manner.
However, the title ‘Ice Cream’ remains to be just a sheer publicity gimmick.
Merits:
- The lead cast’s performance.
- The impressive sound design of the film that remains to be the only magic wand of RGV.
Demerits:
- Beside the simple story and predictable narration, lack of diverse scary elements in the film is the key setback.
Rather than Music, this film has sound design that deserves all the credit. The innovative Flow cam sound design by Seshu MR broke the mold in Telugu cinema and shall give the audience a new experience.
The flow cam cinematography seems to have almost null effect on the visual appeal of the film but has been used with wit. And the title card animation is innovative. The haunted house looks beautiful enough to be occupied soon.
RGV’s Ice Cream is an old vanilla ice cream in a new glass vessel. If you wish to get the asli mazaa, then better close your eyes and listen to the film. Strictly advisable to RGV fans, fans of thriller genre films and people who have the time for experimental cinema.