Coronavirus

Coronavirus Story: K Anand Rao (Srikanth Iyengar) is a common man who fears that Covid-19 will affect his family. How the flawed medical policies in the system bring grief to this family is a tale Coronavirus aims to tell.

Coronavirus Review: The title and trailer suggest this to be a run-of-the-mill attempt from Ram Gopal Varma and his ‘Company’ alumni Agastya Manju to cash in on the pandemic, but surprisingly the film rises above that. Shot completely in the walls for an upper middle-class home, the good thing about the film is that it manages to keep the audience engaged, even if the message it aims to drive home is a little outdated.

The film begins when a nation-wide lockdown is announced due to the pandemic and it generates fear in a family. The way the initial confusion and dread everyone felt during lockdown is well explored by Agastya. Everyone remembers the myths that kept making rounds about the virus and just like any middle-aged person, even Anand Rao loses his sleep over WhatsApp messages. He panics, screams, loses his temper, but all in his helplessness to keep his family safe.

Things take a turn when his daughter Shanti (Sonia Akula) begins showing symptoms. The conflict between fear and love begin there and it’s shown well on-screen without the need for complicated dialogues. When time comes for her to get tested, Anand Rao fears the virus and the hospital costs both. The movie however loses track for a while, with scenes getting repetitive. And after many internal battles, when the whole family does get tested, the film shows how the policymakers truly need to be questioned for the way they have handled the pandemic.

Srikanth Iyengar truly steals the show with a brilliant performance that is believable and natural. Vamsee Chaganti and Sonia too play their roles well. Dakkshi Guttikonda was decent enough. Coronavirus shows how naïve the authorities were when the pandemic broke in India and questions ill-informed politicians for their irresponsible deeds and statements. The fact that the film was shot during the lockdown is appreciable but the message it aims to give seems outdated now. This is a film that might have worked brilliantly when news of the virus broke out in India, but come December with everything reopened, celebrities even flying to various exotic locales for weddings and vacations, and the virus left ignored, it seems too little too late. Of course, to be fair to the makers, they had no choice in the matter!