Saw X: The Rebirth Of Morality-Gore |
This is #CineFile, where our critic Rahul Desai goes beyond the obvious takes, to dissect movies and shows that are in the news. |
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| THE fascinating part about “morality gore” — the mainstay of macabre movie franchises about not-so-good humans being punished in creative ways — is that it emerges from a past world. I grew up a fan of the Saw, Hostel and Final Destination movies, but I always enjoyed them as wicked satires. The torture porn worked because it was a fun manifestation of the social allergy towards annoying American adults, annoying American tourists and annoying American teenagers. It was cinema’s way of toying with real-life stereotypes. But this genre stems from a pre-social-media age, back when rage still had a shock value. Rage is now mainstream; it’s outrage — and readily visible across timelines and screens. The cultural normalisation of hatred means that a movie like Saw X inherits a newer, darker context. Now the games and gore almost feel closer, an extension of our frustrations and (online) disillusionment with everyday life. As a result, the twisted philanthropy at the heart of this misanthropic horror franchise — where flawed victims are offered one final shot at enlightenment — acquires deeper meaning. It’s the sort of binary new-age compassion that comes with caveats: Do or die. Evolve or perish. Saviour or troll. The blood and guts of Saw X become a manifestation of modern discourse. The story cuts straight to the bone: A dying man is scammed, and his revenge is laced with uneasy kindness. |
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Iraivan: Listless Jayam Ravi Adventure Has Few Thrills To Offer |
Iraivan wants to be a cat and mouse game between the hero and the killer but fails miserably because it cannot build up to anything. Aditya Shrikrishna reviews. |
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| | Cast: Nayanthara, Jayam Ravi |
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BODIES. Bodies. Bodies. I Ahmed’s Iraivan is littered with dead young women’s bodies. Naked—blurred, yes—with limbs cut off and eyes gouged. After a point, there are so many that it becomes exploitative. Yes, it is yet another crime thriller with a psychopathic serial killer who targets only women and a possible copycat, but the camera’s gaze seems to enjoy this process more than the serial killer and that’s always a problem. It doesn’t help that every actor in the film is uninterested in being there. Jayam Ravi is listless, Nayanthara’s days of being the female-lead-with-four-scenes are long gone. Even Azhagam Perumal looks bored at one point. Rahul Bose as the killer named Brahma plays it so straight that he looks like he was waiting for someone to yell “pack up”. Yes, we know the killer. Written by Ahmed, Iraivan wants to be a cat and mouse game between the hero and killer but fails miserably at it because it cannot build up to anything. It wants to be a police procedural, but it cannot because we can see all the cards and every question is answered as soon as it comes up. |
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The Creator: It's Humans Vs Machines |
HAL 9000, Skynet, Agent Smith, M3GAN, The Entity: artificial intelligence has taken on different names and different forms on screen. Each raises a queasy concern over how our creation could come to regard us once they surpass us. How would the in-betweenness of a sentient machine destabilise our perception of self? This insecurity regresses into violence, as it so often does, in the near-future of Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi saga The Creator. Humans, robots and humanoid robots (called “simulants”) are caught in a large-scale existential war. While the robot and “simulant” populace ask to be treated with the same rights as humans, the ever-warmongering US government is itching to quash any AI rebellion — by any means (un)necessary. — PRAHLAD SRIHARI |
| Tumse Na Ho Payega: A Badly Told Start-Up Story |
THERE is only one thing worse than a start-up story — it is a start-up story badly told. Hustle culture has lent an annoyance to the narrative of someone being successful by starting something on their own. It has also lent them a personality. If you scroll through Twitter, you will find countless accounts of 30-something people (mostly men) speaking only in threads, leaving no opportunity to remind the rest that they work for 30-hours a day, and dishing out their company’s gross earnings as both a retort and a reply. There is a bot-like energy to these start-up owners, a manic patriotism, like they will break into Vande Mataram if you ask them questions like what are their hobbies. TNHP not just embodies this spirit but embodies it so much that it broke my spirit. — ISHITA SENGUPTA |
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Charlie Chopra & The Mystery Of Solang Valley |
VISHAL BHARDWAJ’s Charlie Chopra & The Mystery Of Solang Valley could have been made by anyone and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The six-episode investigative dramedy is the filmmaker’s more definitive streaming debut (prior to this, he made a short for the anthology Modern Love, Mumbai in 2022) but the series’ absence from his oeuvre wouldn’t have dented it. Its presence, however, stands out as a lesser work in his otherwise towering filmography and perpetuates his recent spate of mostly forgettable work since Haider (2015). But it also lacks something that the others had in plenty: ambition. — I.S. |
| Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar |
CLOCKING in at 39 minutes but densely packed with incident, wit and visual wonder, Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar centres around the wealthy Englishman (Benedict Cumberbatch) of the title who learns to see without his eyes, an ability that allows him to cheat at cards and become even wealthier. Avarice leads to emptiness leads to self-reflection leads to self-reformation. The moral order is inevitably re-established. The joy, however, lies in how Anderson uses his quirkiness and his prodigious ensemble to transform Roald Dahl’s written word into a darkly imaginative diorama for the screen. — P.S. |
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Fukrey 3: All About Toilet Humour (Literally) |
THERE are films with toilet humour and there are films like Fukrey 3, which drag humour to the toilet. Every moment, every scene, every joke in this Mrighdeep Singh Lamba outing has been designed, thought of, and orchestrated as an excuse to talk about shit and urine. As if the director and the writer (Vipul Vig), the original conspirators of the franchise, went to the loo several times when facing creative bankruptcy, then did the most natural thing in the world, and looked down and thought: “Wait, why don’t we make this the story?” If you are telling me that this is not what happened, that two people actually did sit down and write Fukrey 3, and that more people sitting in important positions heard the plan and agreed to it, then I have a question — when did we come to this? — I.S. |
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