Hello Mummy

From the start, Sanjo Joseph’s script and Vaishakh’s direction fail to deliver the comedy, only evoking weak smiles from audiences.

Writer Sanjo Joseph has infused the story with several humorous moments, though it does feel somewhat incomplete in parts.

Horror comedies are a genre that requires a fine balance between thrills and laughs, but debutant Vaishakh Elans’ Hello Mummy mostly stumbles in its attempt to juggle these elements. While the film delivers a handful of genuinely funny moments and a promising premise, its overlong narrative, shallow emotional core, and lacklustre horror sequences make for an exhausting watch. The story follows Stephy (Aishwarya Lekshmi) and her peculiar life, overshadowed by the spirit of her dead mother, who controls every aspect of her existence. When Boney (Sharaf U Dheen), a man-child running a pet shop, enters Stephy’s life, it sets off a chain of comedic events laced with a supernatural twist. The concept of a mother’s spirit being both a guardian and a tyrant within the family dynamic is intriguing on paper, but the execution leaves much to be desired.

In the last act of the film, with the darkness and black magic, which demands a lot of set work and visual effects, the movie looks like a fantasy tale, but the drama isn’t that gripping. Vaishakh and Sanjo are trying to reduce the tiresomeness of the narrative in that part with some Bindu Panicker humor in between. But since the beats of that whole portion are very familiar, the duration feels a lot longer, and the movie starts to feel tedious. Vyshakh Elans, who has done ad films before filmmaking, is trying to give a vibrant visual texture to the movie. Since the horror comedy fantasy aspect is there, the vibrancy coupled with wide lenses gives that peculiar look to this movie. The song placements weren’t that great. Even though the visual effects looked good considering the fantasy space of the movie, the production design, especially for the final episode of the movie, wasn’t that great.