Gore to the fore

Off late thriller movies, stories based on murder mysteries or serial killers have gone rampant across all the woods, be it kolly, tolly or mallu. Happen to saw 2 thriller Malayalam movies back to back and thought will do a mixed review for both in a single post.

Forensic – as the name mentions, the hero happens to be a forensic expert and is solely responsible for all the major twists and break throughs in the movie. Compared to him, the entire police force is totally dummy as they are there in the scene just to do his beck and call. That includes his ex-sister-in-law (so many hashes!!really distant relation) who happens to be the police chief heading that serial killer investigation. Considering the timing of the release, probably the makers of Penguin (tamil movie) suttufied some scenes from related to the kid being serial killer. Yes. You read it right. 2 movies, in the span of a week dealing with under aged kids as serial killers and that too their kills are in the most gruesome and bloodily described and conceived. And there is a real life reference as well posted in the movie justifying the premise. The very first scene of this movie, involves an adolescent kid killing his horribly abusive dad, by strangling him. All close up shots. Perfectly filmed on high definition. Needless to say he is the villain. Only twist being, who he ends up as an adult. For a thriller movie, the film is long by at least 20 minutes. And with every twist dependent on the lead character, just because the movie is named after his department, robs the thrill aspect a bit. But the twists are neat and the deductions are decent as well. Wish it was trimmed without mercy and had some more tautness in the narration. Would’ve made a top class movie, rated definitely R for its violent content. 

Anjaam Pathira – my friends have been going gaga over this movie, since its release this year and yesterday managed to see it on a streaming platform. Another interesting premise of a serial killer, who targets policemen on patrol. He digs out their eyes and heart and dumps the body along with a statue of “goddess of justice” who doesn’t have the patch covering her eyes. The key thing being, when the organs were removed, the concerned victim where conscious and alive. There are few elements like chemical name and beta blockers thrown in like Sujatha novel. And again, the lead guy who is a doctor in criminal psychology, does all the spade work in cracking the clues. In the end, it turns out to be a revenge story. For a movie that runs for over 140 minutes, its biggest weakness has been its length. Merciless trimming could’ve increased the pace of the movie. Also, there were several illogical jumps in the narration, which makes the tracing of the killer a mockery for all its build up. It involves not one but 3 or 4 different mentally disturbed psycho killers, one of them is actually named psycho Simon (??). Again the similarity being, a lady police chief and the supposedly heroine character, hardly having any dialogue or role in the movie.

While it is interesting to see that our guys have finally woken up to the concept of making modern thriller movies, they also need to understand that, despite being even more gory and brutal, western world are uniformly strict on rating the movie. Neither of these would’ve been rated anything less than R by them and definitely not released without any cuts for general public viewing on OTT. Even before the cry over vulgar content on TV serials could be addressed OTT has already started posing similar queries at an even alarming speed.