Cast: Tamannaah Bhatia, Hebah Patel, Vashista, Murali Sharma, Vamis, and others
Director: Ashok you
Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)
After charming audiences with romantic roles and sizzling dance numbers, Tamannaah Bhatia takes a spiritual detour in Odela 2portraying a fierce Naga Sadhu. Leaving her home at a young age, her character devotes herself entirely to Lord Shiva. Meanwhile, her native village is terrorized by a vengeful ghost that brutally targets newlywed brides, plunging the community into chaos.
At the villagers’ desperate plea, she returns as the powerful Naga Sadhu to confront the malevolent spirit. Initially confident in her ability to subdue the force, she soon realizes it’s far beyond her control. As fear grows, the villagers begin to lose faith—not just in her, but in God himself—and ask her to leave.
Director Ashok Teja bestows exaggerated powers upon the ghost, pushing the supernatural angle to illogical extremes. The film borrows heavily from Arundhatia cult classic in Telugu cinema, even echoing its central conflict. However, Odela 2 falls short of capturing that film’s magic or emotional resonance.
The climax spirals out of control, with the ghost’s antics growing increasingly absurd—something that could hurt its box office prospects. Though a sequel, the narrative ambitiously expands to include scenes with Himalayan sadhus discussing the cursed village during meditation—a unique but underwhelming touch.
Tamannaah delivers a compelling performance, bringing gravitas to an otherwise formulaic horror script. The first half offers a few genuine thrills, but the second half falters. While the film celebrates Shiva’s divine power and touches on the sacredness of Gomata (the cow), it quickly slips into horror clichés and tired tropes.
The film opens shockingly—with a schoolgirl walking into a police station carrying a severed head. The backstory reveals that villagers punished the corpse of a serial rapist in a bizarre ritual, only for him to return as a spirit preying on brides. When they seek help from a jailed woman (Hebah Patel), who killed her abusive husband, they turn to her sister—the spiritual warrior Sadhu played by Tamannaah—for salvation.
Writer and co-creator Sampath Nandi attempts to add depth with the mystical Naga Sadhu layer, but the screenplay is riddled with plot holes and leans heavily on genre tropes, delivering a largely predictable experience.
