Rakshasudu (2019 film)

Rakshasudu
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ramesh Varma
Written by	Ram Kumar
Produced by	Satyanarayana Koneru
Starring	Bellamkonda Sreenivas Anupama Parameswaran Saravanan
Cinematography	Venkat C.Dilip
Edited by	Amar Reddy
Music by	Ghibran
Production company	A Studio
Distributed by	Abhishek Pictures
Release date	2 August 2019 (2019-08-02)
Running time	149 minutes
Country	India
Language	Telugu

Rakshasudu (transl. Demon) is a 2019 Indian Telugu-language psychological thriller film directed by Ramesh Varma. The film features Bellamkonda Sreenivas and Anupama Parameswaran in the lead roles and it is the official remake of the 2018 Tamil film Ratsasan,Which was partially adapted from the 1958 german movie Es geschah am hellichten Tag,Which was released in english as It Happened in Broad Daylight.The music is composed by Ghibran, the film began production in March 2019. This film was initially scheduled to be released on 18 July 2019, but later released on 2 August 2019.

Plot

The film opens with two old men discovering a corpse which happened to be a teenage school girl named Samyuktha, a 15-year-old school student who was found brutally murdered and wrapped in a polythene bag.

Arun Kumar (Bellamkonda Sreenivas) is an aspiring filmmaker who wants to make a movie on psychopaths. After being rejected many times despite having a good script and due to pressure from his family, he decides to give up his dreams and become a sub-inspector with the help of his brother-in-law, Prasad (Rajeev Kanakala), a police officer himself. He moves and stay with his sister Sopna (Vinodhini Vaidyanathan), Prasad, and their daughter Siri (Abhirami). Siri gets into trouble when she makes Arun forge her father's signature in her report card as she failed in two subjects. Her class teacher Krishnaveni (Anupama Parameswaran) figures this out and thinks that she signed it herself. Siri brings Arun to her school to act as her father. Later, which Siri is caught by her parents, this leads them to transfer their daughter to another school. Later, Arun meets and befriends Krishnaveni and her niece Kavya (Dua Kaushik), who is speech deprived.

A teenage school girl named Amrutha is abducted on her way back home. Her parents then find a mutilated doll's head in a gift box attached to their dog's collar. Arun finds a similarity between Samyuktha, who was murdered few days ago, and Amrutha, both of them being 15-year-old school students who were kidnapped while returning home from school. Just like Samyuktha, the hair on the doll's forehead is uprooted, the eyes are drilled, and her mouth is damaged. Apart from that, in particular, there is a knife mark on Samyuktha's forehead, ears and nasion. The same marks were found in the doll's face . He tries to convince ACP Lakshmi (Suzane George), his superior egotistical officer, that this was a psycho at work, but his theories are brushed off as fake stories.

Later, Amrutha's corpse was found brutally mutilated. The killer drilled out Amrutha's eyes, broke her teeth, and uprooted her hair in patches. On top of that, Amrutha's body was scarred all over with a knife while she was alive. Arun suggests the corpses be hidden from the public to prevent the killer from gaining public attention. Initially, the officials opposed this idea owing to breaking protocols, but they eventually give in, moving the bodies to a secret facility under Dr. Kishore (Surya). Soon after, another school girl named Meera (Priya) is abducted. She happened to be from Siri's ex-school. The search leads to a teacher named Somaraj (Vinod Sagar), who works at Siri's current school and is revealed to be a pedophile who is preying on schoolgirls. Arun encounters Somaraj trying to molest Siri and beats him up before detaining him. Somaraj admits to being a sexual predator but denies having anything to do with the murders. In a bid to escape, he holds Venkat (Keshav Deepak), a policeman, at gunpoint. Arun manages to gun Somaraj down inside the lift thereby saving Venkat.

Meanwhile, Siri is abducted during her birthday party at home. Arun and Prasad try to find her but they were too late. Arun discovers her mutilated body in their own car trunk, implying that she is also killed. Meanwhile, things get worse for Arun, as he gets suspended for his negligence on shooting Somaraj. Dejected and angry, Arun investigates the case by himself, with the help from a few policemen. Finding an audio clip from the hearing aid of Meera, he traces it back to an old lady magician named Annabella George's (Saravanan) performance at the victim's school function. The lady used her magic show as a tool to kidnap the girls since she impressed all the students with her magic tricks. She invites one student to perform an act and then interacted with the selected student to get closer to them. Then, she started to stalk the selected student leading to their kidnap exactly on the second day after meeting them, without any hassle. This leads him to the next potential victim, a schoolgirl named Sanjana (Trishala). Arun realised that he was following the wrong girl due to Sanjana having a twin sister. Sanjana was abducted, even though she was under surveillance. Arun tracks her location to a house in the city, where he narrowly saves Sanjana from being murdered. The perpetrator escapes, but her identity is revealed to be Mary Fernandez (her real name), who was involved in a killing a long time ago. Arun finds more about the case from the investigating officer, Jaya Prakash, (Radha Ravi), a retired cop.

Mary's son Christopher (Yasar) had been afflicted with Werner Syndrome, a hormonal disorder that caused him to look aged. He was an outcast at school, but a girl named Sophie (Ragavi Renu) took pity on him and befriended him. Christopher soon began to develop feelings for Sophie, but unfortunately, he is heartbroken when she turns down his love and is soon ridiculed at school. The next day, Mary asked Sophie to become friends again and handed her a gift. When Sophie opens the gift box, she found a mutilated doll's head, which was what Sophie gave Christopher as his birthday gift. Sophie was brutally murdered by Mary, and both Mary and her son were arrested.

It was then told that both Mary and Christopher died in an accident, but she is still alive and murdering with the same vengeance. Jaya Prakash finds a clue in the files but is killed by Mary before meeting Arun. On finding him at the scene of the crime, Arun is detained and kept handcuffed at the station. He discovers that Jaya Prakash was trying to reveal that the person who had been performing the magic show in the school had six fingers on left hand and by a photo evidence, it is known that it was Christopher who has six fingers. Since only Mary died in the accident, the psycho is not the lady; it is her own son Christopher, who has taken advantage of his aged appearance. Before Arun can act on this, Christopher attacks Krishnaveni and abducts Kavya. While trying to apprehend Christopher, Venkat is killed. Kavya escapes and is found by Kishore, who tries to hide her in the facility, but Kishore dies trying to protect her. Arun tracks down Christopher to the facility, and after a prolonged fight, manages to kill him and save Kavya.

The movie ends with the media reporting the chain of events and an end to the murders done by the psychopath. It is then revealed that Arun gets a chance to make a movie about a psychopath fulfilling his dream.

Cast

• Bellamkonda Sreenivas as Arun
• Anupama Parameswaran as Krishnaveni
• Saravanan as Christopher & Mary Fernandez/Annabella George (Dual Role)
• Yasar as Young Christopher
• Abhirami as Siri, Arun's niece
• Baby Dua as Kavya, Krishnaveni's niece
• Rajeev Kanakala as Prasad, Siri's father and Arun's brother-in-law
• Vinodhini as Padma, Siri's mother and Arun's sister
• Keshav Deepak as Venkat
• Vinod Sagar as School Teacher Sobharaj
• Suzane George as ACP Lakshmi
• Surya as Doctor Kishore
• Kasi Viswanath as Police Constable Viswanath
• Ravi Prakash as Police Officer Sravan
• Raghavi Renu as Sophie, Christopher's friend
• Raveena Daha as Sharmi, Siri's classmate
• Trishala as Sanjana & Sangeetha (Dual Role)
• Priya as Meera
• Radha Ravi as Inspector Jaya Prakash (cameo appearance)

Production

The film Raatchasan puts high expectations in Tamil audiences and after the movie release expectations goes beyond the previous expectations. Due to this reason the remake rights price for this film goes peaks. After the tuff competition the person Koneru Satynarayana the chairman of the well known educational university KL University Vijayawada bagged the telugu remake rights of the film. The makers started this remake on Feb 2019 and completed on this year June. This remake is directed by Ramesh Varma Penmetsa who has been previously directed films like Ride, Veera, etc., and music by Ghibran, produced by Koneru Satynarayana under the production of A Studios Havish Koneru. This movie is world wide distributed by famous producer Abhishek Pictures Abhishek Nama

Home media

The Satellite and Digital rights of the film were sold to Gemini TV and Sun NXT

Soundtrack

Rakshasudu
Soundtrack album by Ghibran
Released	27 July 2019
Genre	Telugu
Length	14:34
Language	Telugu
Label	Aditya Music
Producer	Ghibran
Ghibran chronology
Kadaram Kondan (2019) Rakshasudu (2019) Sixer (2019)

The film's score and soundtrack are composed by Ghibran and the audio rights are with Aditya Music

No.	Title	Singers	Length
1.	"Chinni Chinni Chinikulu"	Sid Sriram	3:22
2.	"Naa Chinni Thalli"	Kala Bhairava, Ghibran	3:57
3.	"Cheekattlo Kamme"	Shabir, Ghibran	3:58
4.	"Kallaloo Merupu"	Yazin Nizar, Ghibran	3:17
Total length:			14:34

Release

Critical response

Rakshasudu received good box office openings and positive reviews from audiences and critics also. Times of India gives 3.5/5 and says, "There are plenty of twists and turns and that's what works for Rakshasudu". The Indian Express gives 3.0/5 and says, "A bone-chilling serial killer film". The Hindu says, "The taut thriller which is the remake of Tamil film 'Ratsasan' has its share of spine-chilling moments".

External links

• Rakshasudu at IMDb