Baby (2015 Tamil film)

Sakthi (Shira Gaarg), after having separated from her husband, lives with her 6 years old daughter Adhithi (Baby Shrivarshini). In her apartment, Adhithi starts hearing a voice calling her name, and is initially afraid. After celebrating her birthday, Adhithi finds a baby doll near her floor lift and again hears that voice which asks her to take the doll as her birthday gift and Adhithi starts developing a likeness towards that voice and start seeing a ghostly figure to which she gets attached soon. On one night, Adhithi draws the ghostly figure in a piece of paper and writes her name as Anne. When Sakthi notices this drawing, she was bit worried and even consults a psychiatrist who in-turn advises her to spend more time with her child.

Sakthi gets mentally disturbed when one of her friend conveys her that Adhithi neither looks like Sakthi nor Siva (Manoj Bharathiraja), her husband. She goes for a DNA test with Adhithi and the test results turn to be negative - their DNA did not match with each other. Upset with this, she directly goes to her husband Siva's apartment and demands to take her biological daughter Avanthika (Baby Sathanya) with her who was living with her father all these years.

After a hot discussion between the two, Siva reveals a flashback as follows: When Avanthika was born, she was taken to ICU unit as she had some respiratory problem. Siva with help of doctor gets another new born baby from another ward and places near Sakthi who was still asleep. He does this to protect Sakthi as she was mentally too weak to hear her own baby is suffering from respiratory problem. Later, when his own baby recovers Siva tells the truth to Sakthi and gives back another baby to doctor. But this another baby seems to be child of Anne (Anjali Rao) who dies of post-delivery fit after she sees her baby was not present when she woke up from delivery pain. Siva on seeing this decides to take this baby also with him and replaces the baby again when Sakthi was sleeping.

After hearing this story, Sakthi accepts both the children as her own child now and couple also gets united and starts living in Sakthi's apartment together. But things gets worse, when Adhithi gets possessive towards Sakthi as she sees Sakthi getting more attached towards Avanthika. Ghostly figure now frightens Avantika whenever possible and makes her to feel insecure with her mother. On one fine day, Siva sees Anne as that ghostly figure and he immediately realizes Anne was haunting Avantika to have her own child Adhithi to be looked after by Sakthi. When he tells this to Sakthi, she didn't believe him and instead she thinks that Siva was planning to separate her own daughter again from her.

To avoid situation getting even worse and to prevent his own daughter from Anne, he moves back to his old apartment after hot argument with Sakthi. Later, in her apartment, Sakthi gets shocked suddenly when she sees Adhithi playing with Anne and takes Adhithi with her, driving away from her apartment. She calls Siva and tells about what she had seen in her apartment. Siva suggests Sakthi to give Adhithi back to an orphanage to keep full stop to these activities by Anne. But Sakthi refuses this idea and drives away from Siva taking Adhithi with her. She also conveys to Siva on phone while driving her car that she has grown more attached towards Adhithi than Avanthika and she prefers to be with Adhithi forever. Anne who was hearing all these burst emotionally out of what she has done to this family.

But as fate could always have, Sakthi's car meets with an accident which kills Adhithi and leaves Sakthi heavily wounded. The end credit of the film shows that Sakthi standing in front of lift with that doll in her hand. Siva consoles her and takes her back to her apartment. Once they left the place, Adhithi peeps out and sees them walking.

• Manoj Bharathiraja as Siva (Sakthi's ex-husband)
• Shira Gaarg as Sakthi (the Mother)
• Baby Sathanya as Avanthika (Sakthi's natural daughter)
• Baby Srivarshini as Adhithi (Sakthi's 6-year-old step-daughter)
• Anjali Rao as Anne (the Ghost)

The film was generally praised by Behindwoods. They made a special nod to the film's child stars who, while lacked "deliberation in their performance or dialogue delivery", looked comfortable in their characterizations complemented by the work of actress Shira Gaarg as the mother. It was noted that the film's overuse in editing of fade to black distracted from the viewing experience by fragmenting narration and continuity. However, they summarized that the film was "A fairly engaging, template ghost tale with superb performances from the kids and good visuals".[2]

Tamil Cinema News began their review by calling the film "Yet another template Horror Drama". The offered that the child actresses "Srivarshini and Sathanya deserve special mention" for being "fabulous throughout" and fully professional, and that Shira Gaarg in her role as the mother gave "a commendable performance". They pointed out that though this film was to be a comeback for actor Manoj Bharathiraja, his "acting either ranges from overacting to underacting". The found that the film's major flaw was with the editing done by Bagath Singh. They summarized their extensive review by writing "Overall, If you are a true fan of Horror movies, you can give a try else skip it !".[3]

I Luv Cinema gave the film 3-1/2 stars out of 5, and wrote the two child actors "delivered the best performance", offering that in her role as the mother, Shira Gaarg "is at her best." They also opined that the cinematography "is nice" and that director D. Suresh's horror elements " gives thrills and chills to the audiences". However, they noted a flaw in that the "background music is not suited for the theme of this movie." Their summary was "Baby movie is watchable.." but "Strictly for adults".[5]