Psycho

Along with the signature style of Mysskin in creating a visual language, there is an attempt in Psycho to understand why the antagonist here became a psychopath. That track of this movie doesn’t have the desired amount of emotional depth. The drama in the screenplay is uneven and the abrupt shifts in the tone of the movie make it an irregular movie with some captivating and also cringe-worthy moments.  

So the plot here is pretty basic. We have a serial killer who kills women and leave their headless body somewhere outside. At one point in the movie, our heroine Dahini, an RJ gets abducted by this psycho killer. But in the case of Dahini, the killer breaks the pattern and gives her some time so that her lover Gautam who is blind, can come and save her. The effort of Gautam to find the killer and save Dahini is the basic story here.

There is an intent here to make us think about the killer and what he might have gone through. Just like the thief Prasad in Thondimuthalum Driksakshiyum, we are given only minimal bits of information about his past. But the psycho character here never becomes that haunting topic as so many other things happening in the movie forces us to focus on them rather than these characters.  Singam Puli’s Rajanayakam chasing the villain and a blind Gautam driving the car with the help of a paralyzed co-driver are two instances in the movie where one can rightly question the logic of those scenes. These are crucial scenes that got stretched for way too long and eventually ended up being massive distractions for the movie. Mysskin is trying to invest some time in each character and that occasionally breaks the rhythm of the movie.

Aditi Rao Hydari as Dahini was fine in terms of the way she emoted. But the dubbing was clumsy making her character sound too childish. Udhayanidhi Stalin is just about okay in a character where the only major challenge for him was to walk like a blind person. Nithya Menen did her part very neatly as that angry ex-cop Kamala Das. Director Ram as CB CID officer Muthu was good. Rajkumar Pitchumani as Angulimala was indeed terrific.

There is a love story at the center of all this that initiates Gautam’s investigation. The presentation of that love story was extremely half baked. It almost felt like watching a Udhayanidhi Stalin movie romance that never makes a connection with the audience. But as the story progresses, Mysskin introduces interesting characters and exciting events that keeps us interested in the movie. And then again his screenplay sort of deviates into tracks that are presented without full conviction. When you are about to die and you have an immediate message to pass like a vehicle number, won’t you be trying to communicate the message rather than wasting your time and energy by saying stuff like “I have something to tell you…”?  Things like this irritate me as a viewer and when an established name like Mysskin does that, the irritation increases exponentially. Ilaiyaraja’s score felt really apt for the movie as it sort of understood the pitch of the drama in the content. The visuals managed to maintain the spookiness the movie demanded.

Psycho is definitely a watchable film as the filmmaker in Mysskin has used the visual language of cinema neatly. You can sense the effort and intent of the movie as you go through it. But those distractions I mentioned and the half baked feel of certain subplots in the movie make it an uneven ride for the viewer.

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