Aaptharakshaka

This is the 200th movie from late Dr Vishnuvardhan for his fans across Karnataka .

This movie is complete justification for the previous version Aaptha Mithra. Avinash and Sandhya has done a great job . Vishnuvardhan does justice to the role.Vimala Raman as Nagavalli does a fine job.

Bhavana , Ramesh Bhatt , Lakshmi Gopalaswamy as supporting cast has done a descent job .

P.Vasu has executed the movie well . I liked his work in Aaptha Mithra and does a descent job in this flick too .

Songs in the movie are okay type .Gharani Gharani track does stick with you.

i recommend you to watch it .

I go with 7/10 ...

While the plot of this movie treads thin ice throughout its runtime, often padded with unnecessary filler and illogical scenes, the impossibility of it gives the movie a comedic feel. The plot is littered with holes and fails to provide a meaningful payoff to any of the elements set up. The acting is perfectly passable, with no negative comments able to be made. The songs and music contribute in a miniscule manner to the story, often taking up more time than is necessary. The VFX of the movie is weak, and possibly could have been amended with more practical and physical work, especially generating structures and animals. Some improbabilities may take you out of the story on a sincere watch. However, on an unsincere, ironic watch, this movie is easily a 10/10.

This is a must watch movie for all Dr Vishnuvardhan fans as it is his last movie.

It is well made movie with good graphic work.Acting is well done by all esp., Dr vishnuvardhan,Komal,Avinash. Vimala Raman excels as Nagavalli. Ramesh Bhat is wasted and so is bhavana. Vinayaprasad has done her bit.

I wasn't much impressed with some scenes in the movie particularly the snake scene which is ditto copied from tamil movie Chandramukhi. Also Dr Vishnuvardhan as vijaya Rajendra bahadur doesn't help the cause either

In the end i must say that its a good movie with decent storyline. It would have been an awesome movie if director had concentrated a bit on the nativity of the subject.

Aaptharakshaka revisits the Nagavalli legend from Apthamitra and pushes it fully into supernatural territory while also functioning as a farewell to Vishnuvardhan. The story begins with an old painting of the doomed court dancer Nagavalli. It passes from owner to owner until a village painter, who vows never to sell it, is found mysteriously dead. The painting is then given as a prize at a classical dance competition and taken home by Bharatanatyam dancer Saraswathi to her ancestral mansion in Mysore. From that moment the house slips into unease: strange sounds in empty corridors, glimpses of a serpent in the courtyard, the feeling that the painted eyes are always watching. On the day of the engagement of the younger girl Gowri, a friend collapses in terror after seeing a giant snake, the groom flees, and a hired snake charmer dies attempting to "cleanse" the place. As accidents and emotional breakdowns multiply, the family turn to their trusted priest and tantric, Ramachandra Acharya. He realises the force at work is beyond his rituals and calls in psychiatrist Dr Vijay, who once handled a similar case linked to Nagavalli. Vijay arrives expecting trauma, suggestion and repressed emotion but slowly uncovers a darker truth: Nagavalli's spirit is real, she has possessed one of the women, and the tyrant king who destroyed her, Raja Vijaya Rajendra Bahadur, has used black magic to stay alive far beyond a normal lifespan. The film follows Vijay as he pieces together this history, discovers who is truly possessed and travels to the king's fortress for a stormy confrontation that will determine the fate of both the haunted family and Nagavalli herself.

The central characters are clear and memorable. Dr Vijay, played by Vishnuvardhan, is the calm centre of the film. As in Apthamitra he represents rationality and psychological insight, but here he is less interested in debunking superstition and more willing to engage with what cannot be explained. In an effective device he also plays Raja Bahadur, the sadistic king who once treated Nagavalli and her lover as property and now clings to life through dark rituals. One face contains both healer and oppressor, underlining the clash between compassion and control. Nagavalli appears through flashbacks, the painting and possession scenes as a gifted dancer abducted into royal captivity and killed for daring to love someone else. She is both the source of fear and the wounded heart of the story. Among the present-day women, Gowri is the key figure: outwardly a sweet, marriageable girl whose engagement collapses, inwardly anxious and increasingly drawn to Nagavalli's tragedy, which makes her a natural vessel for the dead woman's rage. Saraswathi, who wins the painting, and her sister Geetha show different forms of damage: one broken by grief and mental collapse and hidden away as an embarrassment, the other stuck in limbo as gossip and fear quietly erode her chances at a normal life. Ramachandra Acharya, played with dignified gravity by Avinash, stands for tradition and often argues with Vijay in scenes that echo the larger tension between modern psychiatry and religious explanations.

Thematically, Aaptharakshaka is about more than a ghost in a mansion. On one level it stages the clash between science and superstition. The first half is filled with diagnoses, hypnosis and careful observation as Vijay tries to separate illness from hysteria and suggestion. In Apthamitra this rational angle ultimately wins and the haunting is revealed as psychological. Here the film chooses the opposite answer: the supernatural is real. Nagavalli's spirit exists, the curse attached to the painting is genuine and the king is still alive. Instead of reassuring the audience that ghosts are tricks of the mind, Aaptharakshaka suggests that some traumas and injustices are so heavy they feel like living curses, and that logic and medicine alone are not always enough to dissolve them.

At the same time it is an angry story about patriarchy and female trauma. Nagavalli is not simply a malevolent presence; she is a woman stripped of agency, taken from her home, separated from the man she loves and killed when she resists. The women in the present household echo this pattern in milder, socially acceptable forms. Their worth is tied to marriage prospects, mental illness is hidden to avoid scandal, and their pain is constantly subordinated to the family's fear of gossip and honour. Nagavalli's possession of Gowri, terrifying within the plot, also becomes a channel for a silenced woman to finally punish the man who destroyed her. Because this is Vishnuvardhan's 200th and final film, the story of ending a long-running curse and confronting a decaying tyrant inevitably plays like a reflection on legacy and mortality and gives his fans a sense of emotional closure.

Visually the film is atmospheric and effective. The camera enjoys the old Mysore mansion's corridors, staircases and courtyards, turning ordinary spaces into sources of dread. The painting of Nagavalli is filmed so that it always seems to watch the family, using low angles, slow pushes and selective lighting. The king's fortress is framed differently, with wider compositions, rain, lightning and torchlight that emphasise the operatic scale of the climax. Lighting schemes help separate characters: warmer tones for Vijay, harsher contrasts when Nagavalli or Bahadur dominate a scene. The visual effects, particularly the giant serpent and some ghostly manifestations, are functional rather than spectacular, but they support the mood. Gurukiran's score adds eerie motifs around the painting and energetic cues for investigation and action, tying the different tones together.

From a neutral perspective the film's strengths are clear. The plot genuinely extends the Apthamitra storyline instead of simply repeating it, adding the still-living king and the fortress showdown to give Nagavalli's backstory a decisive end. The question of which woman is truly possessed gives the first half a satisfying mystery hook, and the final reveal fits the clues that have been planted. Vishnuvardhan holds the film together with a commanding performance in both roles, and the actresses playing Nagavalli, Gowri and Saraswathi keep the emotions grounded so the haunting feels tied to real grief and pressure rather than just spectacle.

The weaknesses lie mainly in pacing and emphasis. At more than two and a half hours the film can feel bloated, with comic side tracks and minor subplots that loosen the tension. Viewers who loved the psychological twist of Apthamitra may find the move toward explicit ghosts and black magic less sophisticated, preferring the earlier film's ambiguity. The script also leans on characters explaining the curse and the king's survival instead of trusting visuals and suggestion, and for horror fans used to tighter, quieter scares the melodrama, songs and big confrontations may feel old-fashioned, even if they fit the mainstream Kannada template.

Compared to Apthamitra, Aaptharakshaka is bigger, louder and far more openly supernatural. The original builds suspense on suggestion and ends by stripping away superstition to reveal a psychological puzzle. The sequel validates the ghost story, puts a flesh-and-blood villain on screen and turns the finale into an external battle rather than an internal breakdown. Whether that shift feels like an improvement or a step down depends on taste, but together the two films form a satisfying pair: first taking apart a haunting with logic, then allowing the wronged woman at the centre of the legend to finally claim her justice.

A sequel to "Manichithrathazhu" was the sole reason I watched this movie. However its more of "Chandramukhi II", with focus predominantly on the actor rather than the plot owing to which it doesn't size up quite well. Had the "Nagavalli" been the core premise it would have taken the movie on a different level altogether.

The opening scene doesn't integrate quite well to the the actual plot. If you have seen "Chandramukhi" then the sequel gets quite predictable leaving the novelty/ suspense wiped out completely (infact there is penny dropping moment which should have been avoided). In addition, there are too many family members get associated with the "Nagavalli" plot making it confusing. The CGI's are shoddy and the production values remind of 1980's. Comedy is appalling. Vishnuvardhan smirks were unwanted.

Hopefully the Telugu remake should deliver a product with a greater impact and tie up the loose ends.