Samantha’s Subham Mocks TV Obsession, Falters Due to Cliched Narration

Director: Praveen Kandregula
Rating: 2/5 stars

After making her mark as a leading actress, Samantha turns producer with Subham, a horror comedy that starts with promise but quickly loses steam. The film revolves around women obsessed with TV serials, becoming irritable and even unrecognizable during prime time. While the premise is amusing and offers a few laughs, especially as a timid housewife transforms into a domineering force, it soon falls into a rut of repetitive scenes and a predictable, clichéd screenplay.

Director Praveen Kandregula attempts to deliver a message about mutual respect in marriage and the importance of giving women their space, but it gets drowned in a chaotic mix of ghost gags and stitched-together comedy. A humorous jab at endless serials that stretch logic and delay resolutions (including a scene with an old woman cursing TV makers) captures the film’s narrative flaws, too.

Set in early 2000s Bheemili, the story follows Srinivas (Harshith Malgireddy), a cable TV operator, whose wife Srivalli (Shriya Kontham), an MBA graduate, begins acting bizarrely at 9 PM every night. He soon finds other women in the village behaving the same way. As fear replaces confusion, a deeper mystery emerges—what’s really behind this nightly transformation?

Samantha plays a cheerful ghostbuster and brings energy to her role, offering brief relief in a film dominated by newcomers who put in earnest performances. However, her decision to back the film as a producer seems more driven by the potential of its message than the strength of its storytelling. In the end, Subham mocks the very serial tropes it falls victim to, testing the audience’s patience with a thin plot and an underwhelming second half.