High Priestess Review: Emotional and Terrifying!

High Priestess, the latest ZEE5 original, is an eight-part supernatural anthology series starring Amala Akkineni in the lead role with Kishore Kumar portraying the supporting actor role. Debutant director, Pushpa Ignatius undertakes the directorial responsibilities with Soundarrajan (Maattrraan fame) working as the cinematographer.

Watch all the episodes of High Priestess now.

The storyline of every twenty-five to thirty-minute High Priestess episode commences with our lead character, Swathi Reddy (Amala Akkineni), a world-renowned psychic, now a townswoman of the City of Destiny, Vizag who is living with her mother and her teenage daughter. By reminiscing and reexperiencing her past filled with demons, spirits and supernatural entities, she recounts few intriguing stories with diverse themes similar to vanity and vengeance.

High Priestess has a lot working in its favour and one of the main positives of this horror-drama is the vibe and ambience that director, Pushpa (known for her Cannes premiered short-film ‘Pournami’) and Soundarrajan were able to create. Since the very beginning of the series, the tension that they’re able to create by making terrific use of the low-lit visuals, slow Steadicam shots and the bewitching production design was spectacular to watch. The ability to make a horror anthology series together with secondary subjects like love, drama, friendship work is a tough feat to achieve, and the director pulls it off quite effortlessly. Additionally, complementing the scare value is the background score by Gopal Rao Parnandi which blended in flawlessly with the narrative.

Subsequently, High Priestess also succeeds in telling compelling short stories which are adequate on the surface, but, ardent and emotional to the core. Every narrative manages to tell superior stories about different topics and work through from the beginning to the end masterfully. Tagging along with the introductory stories, there are a few subplots, especially between Amala and Kishore which are significant and delightful. The young teenage years that they had spent together with love and affection were picturized and narrated beautifully in various flashback episodes and provided a much-needed depth and tenderness to the entire series.

The performances from the complete cast are also decent and impactful. Amala Akkineni (who we last saw in last year’s sleeper hit, ‘Karwaan’) once again proved why she is a gifted actress. Her friendly, likeable screen presence coupled with some depth and back story to her character enabled her to shine throughout the series. Her character, which again is very similar to her real-life persona made sense and felt a lot more believable. Kishore, on the other hand, fulfilled his role as the ally of Amala perfectly. The strong chemistry in the scenes between them was infectious and felt very candid yet warm. But at the same time, they blended well with the overall narrative.

Overall, High Priestess delivered what it promised in the trailers before it’s release. It is both emotional and terrifying at the same time and surely is an entertaining series to binge watch. The enchanting production design, remarkable camera work, frightful background score only makes this eight-episode series a must watch for every cinephile who loves to watch the world of horror and the supernatural mixed flawlessly with a decent amount of emotion and feel-good drama.

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