‘Chathur Mukham’ movie review: Manju Warrier’s ‘techno-horror’ has a few surprises up its sleeve

With virtually all of the attainable horror themes that might scare folks virtually nearing exhaustion, it’s left to scriptwriters and filmmakers to mine recent concepts that might give the chills to the viewers. Those that maintain a watch round themselves, absorbing in all of the adjustments, might nonetheless give you one thing that feels modern and that might make folks assume, suspending disbelief, that this might probably occur to them too.

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In Chathur Mukham, smartphones and even selfies turn out to be sources of horror, serving to it join instantly to a big part of the viewers. However merely making these ubiquitous issues a part of the narrative wouldn’t be sufficient. It must be backed by situations which are convincing and a plot that’s considerably natural, each of that are achieved by the filmmaker duo of Ranjeet Kamala Sankar and Salil.V, and the scriptwriter duo of Abhayakumar.Okay and Anil Kurian.

Thejaswini (Manju Warrier) is a social media addict, who retains updating pictures from her each day life always on-line. After she loses her smartphone, she decides to purchase a brand new one from a web-based retailer. Mysterious occasions start to happen after the telephone arrives. Alongside together with her buddy Antony (Sunny Wayne), with whom she is operating a struggling CCTV digital camera enterprise, she seeks the assistance of Clement (Alencier), a science fanatic who’s skeptical of something that doesn’t have a rational clarification.

The gist of the plot and even the trailer may give one an impression of a run-of-the-mill horror film, but the makers have saved fairly a number of surprises inside, peppered at common intervals. There’s typically an try to offer a scientific clarification for the happenings on the display screen, with a few of the characters even poking enjoyable or dismissing the normal Malayalam horror film substances of black magic and exorcism. But, the script doesn’t totally dismiss the supernatural parts, that are very a lot a part of the plot too, however coated with a skinny veneer of scientific reasoning.

A few of these horror parts may seem over-the-top, however are handled in a way more managed method. The makers, who’re all from the sphere of expertise, additionally get a contact philosophical on how there isn’t a escape from the ‘sign’, which retains you hooked to 1 digital gadget or one other for each waking hour of your life. They appear to inform us that exorcising that ghost is perhaps a good more durable process than dealing with the standard ones.

Thejaswini just isn’t portrayed as a damsel in misery, however as somebody who leads the combat from the entrance. The strained relationship together with her brother, and the way the mysterious occasions make her have a relook at it varieties an fascinating, however under-explored tangent. The script additionally treats her friendship with Antony in a mature method, refusing to fall for the compulsion to show it right into a relationship.

Chathur Mukham may rating decrease on the scare-quotient half, however makes up for a similar with the novelty and believability of a few of the plot factors. Contemplating its branding as a ‘techno-horror’, it lives up virtually totally to the ‘techno’ a part of it, and partly to the ‘horror’ a part of it, a reality which the faint-hearted may be pleased about.

Chathur Mukham is at present operating in theatres