Orr Eravuu

Plot

Nakulan Ponnusamy, a paranormal investigator and proprietor of Silver Chord Services, travels from Chennai to Munnar where he goes to solve a case of a house believed to be haunted, belonging to a businessman Anand Chandrasekar. Nakul spends one full night in the haunted house and conducts his sophisticated paranormal investigation. Meanwhile, Nakul finds that three other investigators belonging to Seventh Sense Para-psychology team also had come to the house for investigation. After some horrible sequences and mysterious circumstances, Nakul is found dead in the house. Daisy, a reporter in a Television Program Metro Crimes analyzes Nakul's death.

Cast

Production

Orr Eravuu was produced by one of the directors Hari Shankar under the banner Shankar Bros; it was the studio's first film project. The film was initially titled as Eraaa, before it was renamed.

The crew had been involved in the study of paranormal procedures, been working on field with Ouija board (wee-gee board), electronic voice phenomenon, EMF meters, micro cassette recorder and much more scientific instruments. Also they involved at night shoots in the locations which were broadly believed to be haunted. Notably, all technicians who worked in this venture were newcomers.

Sathish. G played the lead role and handled the cinematography as well, shooting in Point-of-View and using shaky camerawork. Sathish. G had designed his own rig to fix the camera at the level of human's eye and shot the whole film, assembling the rig on his head with the Sony HD Camera. With this camera setup, he walks, drives, climbs, runs, performs all the paranormal tests and takes the audience into the scene. Since the film was made in digital, Hari Shankar decided to have a sophisticated Edit Setup and preferred to use the Apple Systems. The entire film was edited in Apple Final Cut Pro with the true HD resolution 1080p. The sound was recorded live to make the audience feel the real ambience of the scene. The DTS sound was mixed in the A. M. Studios by Shiva Kumar and Kannan.

Music

The music was scored by K. Venkat Prabu Shankar. Although, the film was planned to be released without any film score and only a theme music at the end credits, the crew decided that to include a score to elevate the tension. The theme of the score is based on 3 states of matter; solitariness, seeking and terror. The music was scored giving high priority to silence, live sound and the visuals. The film features one song that was supposedly penned by the spirit of legendary poet Kannadasan, through a medium, C. M. Rathnasamy, who has vast experience in this field of spirit interaction for nearly 30 years. The song was composed and performed by Sathish Kumar. The song includes the narration of the classic Tamil play Harichandra in which the lead character lives as a grave digger, describing the practice of funeral according to the good or bad life of the dead.

The soundtrack consists of three songs.

1. "Ucchi Malayil" - composed and performed by Sam C.S.
2. "Kaadhala" - composed by Sam C.S. and performed by Mancy and Sam C.S.
3. "Naan Oru Netraya Nayagan" - composed by Sathish Kumar and performed by Benny Dayal.

Reception

Orr Eravuu released to mixed critical response. Rediff's Pavithra Srinivasan gave the film 3 out of 5, citing that it was "definitely worth a watch". Malathai Rangaraja from The Hindu wrote: "The premise is interesting, the narration is new, the genre is fresh and the effort to be different is evident. Yet if the subject fails to keep the viewer glued to his seat, it's probably because the technical team is a let-down!" Bhama Devi Ravi from The Times of India gave the film 1.5 out of 5 and said: "...all the feverish excitement is lost when the film stays confined to the documentary feel [...] There are too many loopholes in the story [...] You come out feeling cheated of goosebumps". A Behindwoods.com reviewer gave it 2.5 out of 5, describing the film as "successfully scary".

Awards

Orr Eravuu won the Best Tamil Independent Film Award at the 2010 Chennai International Film Festival.