Sunil Ibrahim is a filmmaker whose movies always look interesting on a thematic level but never get a fulfilling result when they are made. His new movie Roy is yet another thriller with mysteries. But the dullness in the narrative and the forced staging of sequences make it not at all compelling, and looking at the way it ended, it almost felt like they wrapped everything hastily for closure.
Roy is a man with certain psychological issues. He is a lucid dreamer who sometimes finds it difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is a dream. His wife Teena, a journalist and writer, was actually his support system. The movie Roy deals with the events that unfold in Roy’s life when Teena goes missing one day. His efforts to find her and the reasons behind her missing are what we see in this Sunil Ibrahim film.
A man losing the one person who understood him while everyone else excluded him, setting out to find that person is actually a very enticing idea for a thriller. Because he is a character with an evident limitation. Through flashback scenes, Sunil Ibrahim shows the audience why his psychological condition made his social life very difficult. But the visualization of everything is very cluttered, and it doesn’t flow. In fact, the movie is even struggling to create a moment of excitement. And the primary reason for that is its outdated sensibility in conceiving a scene.
Suraj Venjaramood tries to underplay being this socially awkward person. But somewhere, I felt his approach towards making Roy such an individual looked very forceful. Neither the script nor his performance was doing anything to make us feel bad for that character who was going through a terrible patch in his life. The movie actually offers a better space to Sija Rose, who plays Roy’s journalist wife, Teena. Sija fits the part, but she even struggles to pull off some of the poorly written dialogues. It was good to see Shine Tom Chacko in one character with no element of eccentricity. Jinse Baskar, Riya Saira, Vijeesh Vijayan, Rony David, Anju Joseph, etc., are the others in the cast.
The treatment’s dated nature restricts Roy from being a unique thriller. The way it deviates to songs breaks the movie’s rhythm, and the misdirection attempts are very clearly visible. When the character, played by Jinse Baskar, realizes certain things about Roy’s investigation, it is not that much of a surprise for the viewer as that possibility was evident in the first place. Just like Arikil Oral, Sunil Ibrahim wants to use the mental condition of his central protagonist as a tool to include supernatural elements. But the sluggish treatment just doesn’t help the film in utilizing that aspect. The ununderstandable sluggishness that you see in the way the police investigate the case is actually visible in the scripting of the movie as well.
Seeing the film’s climax, I wondered whether that was the initial plan, as it barely did justice to the whole buildup around the case and the situation of our title character. Roy from Sunil Ibrahim is a wasted opportunity to make a psychological thriller and easily the least impressive flick from the filmmaker.
Roy from Sunil Ibrahim is a wasted opportunity to make a psychological thriller and easily the least impressive flick from the filmmaker.
Green: Recommended Content
Orange: The In-Between Ones
Red: Not Recommended
