Debutante director Sinish Sreedharan’s Balloon is more of a thriller comedy than a horror. Of course, there are plenty of horror moments but the USP of the film is the comedy that keeps the audience entertained in the first half.

Spooks, thrills and comedy are rest assured along with a flashback in films like Balloon but how entertaining is it, is all that matters. When the film scores well with comedy, spooks, thriller, and flashback, don’t quite allure you.

Yogi Babu’s comedies are the highlight of the film, perhaps that is the only highlight in Balloon. Yogi is in top form coming up with one counter after another that would make the audience laugh their heart out. Sadly, his portion gets very limited in the second half and the film looks totally different and lifeless without him.

A weak flashback sequence and a less gripping second half, totally make you forget the fun you had in the first half. The idea of a horror comedy is not an untapped area in Tamil cinema, but the horror element in the film doesn’t work most of the times. The audience is mostly ahead of what is going to happen. You can easily guess when and where one could spot a ghost, which takes away the thrill.

Balloon enjoys a facelift because of its technical team - Yuvan for some attractive crowd-pleasing re-recording, Saravanan for appealing visuals and Ruben for slick packaging. One feels the songs could have been a tad better and it mostly comes in as a distraction than a relief. The CGI work in the film at places looks slightly unconvincing.

Jai with his subtle expressions does a neat job while Anjali does her best to gel with the script and she does her bit rather well. Jai and Anjali’s chemistry is good but two songs to showcase their romance, though filmed and choreographed well, seem unnecessary to the sequence of events. Janani Iyer does her best in the limited screen space. The villain characterisation is uninteresting, which is an important factor to make the flashback less engaging. Lack of solid horror elements and a feeble flashback play spoilsport in Balloon even though Yogi Babu shines big time.