This movie needs sarcastic robots.

Full disclosure - the cut of Sanjeevani: Adventure on the Edge (2019) that I watched did not include subtitles, and so it's possible that the film's dialogue is amazing and makes up for any shortcomings in special effects or acting or pacing or costuming or basic common sense.  It's possible, but I'm not counting on it.

 

 The plot is pretty straightforward, at least.  Omkar (Manoj Chandra) is offered an absurd amount of money by the Indian military to lead an expedition to a remote Himalayan plateau in order to retrieve the titular sanjeevani, the miraculous flower that Hanuman retrieved in order to save Lakshman's life in the Ramayana.  He assembles a motley team, and here's a place where subtitles would have helped, because they seem like just a bunch of poorly prepared college kids.  Naresh (Mohan Bhagath) is at least a filmmaker, but Nandu (Anuraag Dev) and Mounika (Swetaa Varma) are actors, and not particularly good ones.  (In universe, that is; I'm picking on the characters, not the actual actors.)  And it's not clear what skills Uncle (Purnesh Gudepu, Tommy (Amogh Deshapathi), Isha (Tanuja Naidu) or Abhi (Nitin Nash) bring to the table, apart from bickering. 

 

After driving along the well-maintained road that leads to the isolated Himalayan plateau, the group takes  a moment to annoy a meditating sage (Shekhar Babu Bachinepally) and be cursed.  Then they reach the plateau in time for some walking with prehistoric beasts.  The movie opens with a military helicopter being menaced by giant flying reptiles, but they don't get much screentime.  Instead, the three terrors of the Fire SwampLost Plateau are the murderchimps, roving packs of giant spiders, and Tommy, who snaps and kills Uncle basically as soon as they are alone.  (He might have had a good reason, but again, no subtitles.)  

Fortunately, the spiders, at least, are dumb and easy to outrun or trick into losing their footing, because if there's one thing spiders are famous for, it's easily losing their footing.

The other peril our heroes face is a limited budget.  While the spiders and the murderchimps do plenty of menacing, it's clear that actually interacting with the actors is just not possible with the technology available, so any actual killing takes place offscreen, and the monsters are used sparingly.  Internal conflict within the group helps with that, and Tommy is not the last team member to get murdery for no apparent reason.,  But the real padding comes from . . .

 

Rock climbing.  So much rock climbing.

 

Sanjeevani is not a good movie, but it is an enthusiastic movie. It feels like a first time director's passion project that somehow managed to escape into mass distribution.  It's bad in a different way than a bloated, overhyped mess like Zero.  And the dialogue might be incredible.