118 (2019)

118 – An engaging thriller with a supernatural element at its heart.

An investigative journalist has a recurring dream about a girl being murdered which he investigates.

The movie begins with the murder of the lead Nivetha Thomas appearing in Kalyan Ram’s dream. Kalyan’s character being a daring investigative journalist pursues the crime from the various clues in his dream. There are several characters who come and go in his life including his fiancee Shalini Pandey and best friend Prabhas sreenu.

The story while being interesting, sometimes goes out of genre mingling with fantasy. There are multiple number of twists and turns with interesting sub plots. The director has managed to include a social subject involving medical corporate in the story. The screenplay is taut and doesn’t deviate much from the plot except for the first action sequence not being much use to the story. The actors played their characters well especially Nivetha being given a small screen time. Kalyan looked stylish and did enough justice to his job. Shalini looked cute with her expressions in a romantic track, apart from which she didn’t have much to do other encouraging the hero with illogical motivation. However her chemistry with Kalyan was very good.

The cinematography which was also handled by the director is appropriate for the subject. The only thing to be criticized is that nearing the end, the movie somewhat improvised from the dream concept in interstellar movie bringing an abrupt end to the movie without much closure. The movie has only one track which is good while the background score complements the movie very well.

With a run time over just 2 hours 11 minutes the movie is a racy watch if you don’t focus too much on the cinematic liberties taken. The director has managed to make us ignore the illogical parts by making us focus on the actors and the movie as a whole.

This is a must watch for the weekend if you are in mood for thrillers.

Review by Muthu Shanmugam