Director: Nelson Venkatesan

Cast: S J Suryah, Priya Bhavani Shankar, Karunakaran

Picture this scene- we first see the legs..then the hands..then, as the rousing background score builds up the ‘mass’, we see the torso..and finally the reveal..we see the face! This could put any hero introduction scene to shame and well, there’s a twist here in ‘Monster’, directed by Nelson Venkatesan (of Oru Naal Koothu fame). This introduction scene, drawing raucous cheers from the audience, is for the villain..and it’s also a rat..a ‘Monster’ of a rat!

Anjanam Azhagiyapillai, (the terrific SJ Suryah), an EB engineer struggling to find a bride, decides to buy a house to boost his chances of an ‘arranged’ marriage. And what could go so wrong here that his life would become living hell? Is the house haunted, perhaps? No, worse apparently..it’s infested by an absolute brat of a rat! It will gnaw at wires, knock down utensils and even chew up 6 lakh rupee sofa sets and set them on fire..which before you wonder, Anjanam had bought as a surprise gift for fiancée Mekala (the delightful Priya Bhavani Shankar)..love is blind, definitely! As with any good script, the protagonists celebrate a false win right at mid-point. Brought up under the influence of religious preaching that discourages harming even an insect, Anjanam decides to let the rat live after catching it. And boy, what a blunder that turns out to be! Remember the scene from Enthiran where the robot rises from the ashes of the Perungudi dump? Replace 2.0 with our ‘Monster’ rat and we slip into a rip-roaring interval block here! This is where another sub plot starts gathering steam too- that of a diamond smuggler and a missing diamond. All this adds to the chaos and with his big wedding day fast approaching, Anjanam is quite rattled (had to slip this pun in somewhere)!

Nelson Venkatesan has retained his core team from Oru Naal Koothu and they have all delivered splendidly. Justin Prabhakaran’s score is rollicking and Gokul Benoy’s cinematography is brilliant, especially in the scenes that are shown from the point of view of the rat. I feared that the film would drag a bit towards the end, consumed a little too much by some sub-plots, but thankfully, the director just about manages to steer the story towards a splendid, heart-warming finale. This film is probably the missing diamond from Kollywood we’ve all been searching for this year!

Overall rating: 3/5