Game Over
Ratings: 3/5
Duration: 1hr 43 mins
Director: Ashwin Saravanan
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Release Date: 14.06.2019 (India)
Star cast: Taapsee Pannu, Vinodhini
Plot: A nyctophobic woman fighting her inner demons to stay alive in the game called life.
Review: The movie has many thrilling layers to it both psychological and paranormal and these moments are what make this film interesting. The film begins with a woman being brutally murdered and news reports showing how this is just the beginning of a horrifying serial murders.
Taapsee Pannu (Sapna) is a video game developer who is battling anxiety issues (PTSD), has a crippling fear of the dark and homebound since she suffered a traumatic experience. Her nyctophobia is first triggered by the personal tragedy that happened just a year ago, and she is unable to come to terms with it. Hence shuts herself to the world, to her parents a year ago, and stays with her caretaker, Kalamma for company. The only thing that keeps her going is her love for gaming, and the one thing she wants to do is beat her own score in Pac-Man.
But her life changes after she finds out that the ink that was used to make the tattoo on her wrist contains a stranger girl’s ash, and that her dark past has come back to haunt her. (The idea of a ‘memorial tattoo’ - where people mix a loved one’s remains into tattoo ink to keep them bonded under their feels both beautiful and disturbing).
And as the news of a serial killer on the loose sends the city into a tailspin, Sapna suffering from PTSD starts sensing a strange presence around her. She, an assault victim, and carries the scars of a spirited girl who had been bound and decapitated. Things just get worsened when she becomes the target of the serial killer.
Though the director has subtly keyed in a supernatural element to make the story plausible and watchable, Game Over is an open-ended movie that ignores to answer questions which are on the periphery of its story. Even there are some scenes which give you jolt because of its failure to stick to the basic idea of continuity and intensity. The level of thrill declines as the movie comes to its end. This is mainly due to the repetition of the circumstances that starts settling your nerves. In the second half, there is a tug of war of sorts between reality and fiction, which creates more confusion than clarity. Intriguing for the most part, Game Over fails to reach a satisfying climax. But that does not take away from the spine-chilling experience and its leading lady's impressive performance.
