Who

Exploring unexplored terrains of movie concepts is indeed a good thing to do. But the execution of those concepts has to be very convincing if you want to please viewers. The new movie Who directed by Ajay Devaloka is one such concept where the writer-director is trying to explore the possibilities of the concept of a dream. But the sophistication in the movie looked so fake that I ended up waiting for the movie to get over.

John Luka is this man who is stuck in a dream where he is reaching a house following a star. And incidentally, there are a few more persons in the valley who are having the same dream. There is another person named Dolores who is stuck in another dream where she sees the abduction of a young girl. It’s hard for me to summarize the movie’s aim, so let me just say that the movie explores these two dreams and also a criminal investigation that has a connection with John and Dolores.

First of all the writing, especially the dialogue writing of this movie is terrible. Every character in the movie spits philosophy every second.  And the movie seems to be only interested in throwing random twists and visual gimmicks. I know that this is the second part of the trilogy and we may have a prequel and sequel in the future. But that isn’t an excuse to make the viewer think like what the hell is happening. Building intrigue is essential for thrillers like these and what Ajay Devaloka has done is pretty much a test of our patience. There are moments where you will feel that something decisive is going to happen and the script just goes on and on creating buildups rather than genuinely pleasing plot twists. I still don’t understand the reason why John walks out in slow motion towards the climax when a vital information is passed to him. And towards the end, they are saying that this particular investigation has changed the investigating officer psychologically. And I was like “seriously? This Investigation?”

I am completely not against experiments. It is totally okay to get inspired by interesting concepts we have seen in the west. But when your creation sort of tries to mock the intricate feel of the classics, it becomes an excruciating experience that can’t be acknowledged as an exciting experiment. Who as a movie is still exciting on a concept level. It is the development and added layers that lack conviction. Dolores’s friend at one point says something like “I don’t know what you are talking about” and I felt relieved that I wasn’t the only clueless person here. The editing of the movie is haywire and even in the cinematography, all I could sense was gimmickry rather than craft. The sound design of the movie is impressive. The background score and the scenes don’t go hand in hand.

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Shine Tom Chacko has very little to do here rather than some walking and I hope he will have a major role in the upcoming parts of the Ajay Devaloka cinematic universe ( I am not making this up, it’s actually written there at the beginning of the movie). Same was the case with Rajeev Pillai. The major performer here is Pearly Maney and I must say that she was really good at being Dolores. She manages to give layers to a poorly written character. Collector Bro Prashanth Nair IAS was fine in his role. Shruthy Menon fails miserably in the dialogue delivery. Gopu Padaveedan and Srikanth Menon as the police officers were totally unimpressive.

Who from Ajay Devaloka is trying to project itself as a complicated story by confusing the viewer with convoluted timelines and unnecessary philosophies. People like Christopher Nolan has actually made it easy for us to understand theoretically complicated things using the visual medium. Here I felt that a seemingly simpler space got unnecessarily complicated for the sake of looking like a difficult subject.

Rating: 2/5