Love Me Movie Review

Dil Raju’s nephew Ashih entered the films with Rowdy Boys and here he comes with his second release ‘Love Me If You Dare’ which is touted to be a romantic horror drama. The trailer managed to get attention from all for its ‘ghostly’ love story. Baby fame Vaishnavi Chaitanya is playing the female lead and her presence also turned many heads towards this film. The movie is directed by Arun Bhimavaravu. It was released in theaters and let’s see how it actually is. Here is the review from one of the US premieres.

What Is It About?

Arjun (Ashish) and Pratap (Ravi) are YouTubers who bust the fake ghosts and myths. Priya (Vaishnavi Chaitanya) is Pratap’s girlfriend. Pratap decides to investigate the missing case of his childhood friend only to find out she turned into a ghost Divyavathi, but Arjun wants to bust the fake story around her. He heads to the haunted place of Divyavathi and decides to stay there after bumping into her in the first meet. What happens to Arjun and who is Divyavathi? The twists and turns in the tale reveal the answers to these questions.

Performances

Ashish is alright in the lead role. His role is more subtle and he did fine in it. Vaishnavi Chaitanya did well in her role. Ravi Krishna and Simran Chowdary appeared in supportive roles and they did what was needed.

Technicalities

Love Me has good cinematography and that is all. Legendary Cinematographer P.C. Sreeram once again proves his talent. The background score is routine and the screenplay is confusing. The songs are just the big hurdles amid the derailed narrative.

Thumbs Up

Cinematography

Thumbs Down

Plot and Narration
Screenplay
Songs

Analysis

Love Me If You Dare has an unrealistic plot with a mix of a love story, a bit of a ghost scare, and a crime investigation. Due to the overdose of confusion and unconvincing love track, Love Me remains far from interesting.

The first half of Love Me suffers from a slow pace and background narrative dominating the characters on screen. It also stumbles with the narrative that gives no thrills or chills at all in the first half of the movie. The pursuit of the protagonist to prove the theory of ghosts wrong becomes meaningless when he decides to fall in love with one. With multiple threads and names, the director creates confusion but could not successfully untangle it at a later point.

With a subpar establishment of plot and characters in the first half, the latter half starts off with the same slow pace. The narrative goes back and forth finally turning the drama into a complicated crime investigation. The songs come as speedbreakers in between. The plot twist could be sensed from miles ahead, but the answer to why and how is only revealed in the end and is not so convincing. The preachy protagonist who has extreme clarity misses tiny logic many a time.

By bringing too many popular faces into the story, the director tries to save the plot twist but it keeps looking at us right from the beginning. The suspense element struggles to hold the grip for the same reason. The basic plot itself is not convincing enough and the lead characters appear clueless often. There are hardly any scenes that can give goosebumps in this romantic horror drama.

Love Me is a love drama in disguise of a horror drama, where both turn out badly. The cliffhanger in the end brings it back to the horror genre with a twist in it. It has to be seen if the makers will really want to bring a sequel for this weak plot and uninteresting narrative.

Bottomline: Lost In Confusion

Rating: 2/5