There are bad movies, and then there are movies that slap “India’s first stereoscopic 3D horror film” on the poster like that alone will distract you from the script slowly dissolving in front of your eyes. Lisaa is very much in the second category: a film that proudly walks into the room yelling “TECHNOLOGY!” while quietly hiding the fact that the story is duct-taped together from The Visit, family melodrama, and random jump scares that wouldn’t startle a sleeping houseplant.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if someone bootlegged M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit into Tamil, took out most of the creepiness, added some lecture notes about respecting your elders, and then put the whole thing in 3D for no particular reason—congratulations, you’ve just described Lisaa.
Plot, or: “What If We Just Said They Were Psychos?”
The setup actually has potential in that early-2000s Tamil horror way: Lisaa wants her single mother to remarry before she flies off to the US, because heaven forbid Amma exist without a husband while her daughter is living her life. Mom, however, believes her first husband died because she married him without her parents’ consent. Obviously, the only logical solution is for Lisaa to take a five-day trip into the Western Ghats to meet the grandparents and get their blessing.
So Lisaa and her friend Jagadeesh (Jaggu), the designated comic-relief sidekick, head out on a road trip. In a smarter movie, the travel portions would build atmosphere and tension; in Lisaa, they mainly build your awareness of how long this 5-day trip is going to feel in movie time.
When they finally reach the grandparents’ remote hill-house, things get weird. Not horror-movie weird—just “these people clearly failed the basic human interaction tutorial” weird. The old couple behave strangely, say unsettling lines, act off-kilter and suspicious. Lisaa and Jaggu conclude, quite reasonably in horror-logic terms, that her grandparents might be ghosts.
You, having read the words “uncredited remake of The Visit,” already know where this is going.
Plot twist (and I use “twist” generously): they’re not ghosts. They’re psychos. That’s literally how the film frames it. The suspenseful supernatural setup is swapped out for the narrative equivalent of “lol, mental illness and violence.” It’s like the script got tired halfway through and decided that “psychos” was a good enough explanation for everything.
From there, it becomes a chase-and-scream affair. Psycho Grandpa starts hunting Lisaa around the property, culminating in a shed showdown where he tries to kill her. Just when it looks bleak, in comes Sharada—Lisaa’s actual grandmother—to save her. The movie seems to think this reveal is some grand emotional payoff; mostly it feels like the script remembered at the last second that Lisaa was supposed to have real grandparents somewhere.
The Big Moral: Respect Your Parents Or Die, Apparently
Because Lisaa can’t just be a horror film—it has to be A Message, capital M—the psycho grandpa’s motive is eventually explained. He tells the police he kills children who disrespect their parents, because his own son did the same to him. Forget nuance; we’re doing Boomer Horror now.
The backstory is deeply unintentionally funny: Psycho Grandpa was in an old-age home. The owner got evicted. So he and his equally unhinged wife went around asking for donations. They arrive at Lisaa’s grandparents’ house, find the real old couple dead in each other’s arms, and… just decide to move in and take their place. As you do.
We’re meant to find this tragic and terrifying. What it actually feels like is someone watched The Visit, scribbled down “fake grandparents,” then panicked and added a “respect elders or DIE” morality tale on top. It’s less horror, more extended chain WhatsApp forward, the kind that ends with “If you love your parents, share this with 10 people.”
3D! Now With Extra Pointlessness
The film is loudly marketed as India’s first stereoscopic 3D horror film, which raises two important questions:
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Why?
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No, seriously, why?
In a genre like this, 3D could be used to enhance claustrophobia, depth, and tension—make us feel trapped in the house with Lisaa, or forced into the cramped spaces where danger lurks. Instead, you get the cinematic equivalent of someone waving random objects at the camera just because they can.
There’s no real visual strategy here. The 3D is a gimmick pasted on top of a movie that already struggles to justify 2D. It’s like putting neon underglow lights on a broken-down auto and calling it a supercar.
Characters: Now With 70% Less Personality
Anjali as Lisaa does what she can, but there’s only so much soul you can breathe into a character whose primary functions are:
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Argue with mother about remarriage
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Act politely confused by weird grandparents
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Scream and run from psycho grandpa
Her friend Jaggu (Sam Jones) exists largely to crack jokes that break tone and act scared in 3D. If you’ve seen even one Tamil horror-comedy, you’ve met his archetype before, usually with better material.
Makarand Deshpande, in his Tamil debut, absolutely commits to being unhinged as Dhananjayan/Raghavan, the psycho grandpa. But with dialogue and motives this clumsy, his performance ends up feeling like it teleported in from a completely different, much louder movie.
Yogi Babu and Brahmanandam show up in supporting parts and comic detours—because why not toss in every possible tonal direction at once? The result is a horror film that keeps interrupting itself with unrelated comedy, then expecting you to snap right back into terror. It’s mood whiplash, just not the fun kind.
“The Visit,” But Make It Less Everything
Look, if you’re going to unofficially remake The Visit, you’ve got your work cut out for you. The original had:
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Genuine slow-burn tension
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Kids with actual personalities
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Creepy, layered grandparents
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A twist that, while wild, felt earned
Lisaa takes the structural skeleton—kids visiting grandparents, increasingly bizarre behavior, final reveal they’re not who they say they are—and strips away all the careful buildup and psychological dread. In its place, we get jump scares, “psycho” monologues, and a reveal so hurried it feels like the film is late for another appointment.
Where The Visit weaponized the uncanny—old age, dementia, family estrangement—Lisaa weaponizes… moralizing and loud noises. The scariest thing here isn’t the killers; it’s the filmmaking’s complete lack of faith in the audience’s intelligence.
Horror That Forgot To Be Horrifying
The saddest part is how rarely Lisaa actually feels like a horror film. There are moments that want to be unsettling: the grandparents’ strange actions, the isolated Western Ghats setting, the gradual discovery that something is wrong. But they’re undercut by:
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Over-explained dialogue
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Random comic tracks crashing through the mood
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Staging that telegraphs scares from a mile away
Every time the film gets close to genuine suspense, it elbows you in the ribs with either a joke, a lecture, or a clunky exposition dump. It’s like being told a ghost story by someone who keeps stopping to explain the punchline and remind you to call your parents more often.
Final Verdict: More PSA Than Paranormal
Lisaa could have been a decent little thriller—a Tamil riff on The Visit with local flavor, some thoughtful commentary on aging, family, and abandonment. Instead, it’s a wobbly mashup of undercooked horror, recycled plot, and moralistic finger-wagging, wrapped in a 3D bow it never earns.
If you’re terrified of:
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Disrespecting your parents
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Uncredited remakes
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Misused 3D technology
…then Lisaa might accidentally function as horror for you.
For everyone else, it’s less “India’s first 3D horror film” and more “India’s longest cautionary tale about what happens when you say yes to a remake and no to a rewrite.” The only truly frightening thing here is the thought that someone will watch this and think, “You know what Tamil cinema really needs? Lisaa 2—in 4D, with extra moral.”
