Cast: Taapsee Pannu
Director: Ashwin Saravanan
What’s it about:
A psycho serial killer is on the loose who beheads young women living alone and burns their bodies. Sapna (Taapsee) a lonely game coder lives in fear at a palatial secluded villa in Gurugram after a recent attack that leaves her terrified of dark spaces. Will she overcome the demons of her past and survive the present danger of an impending attack?
Review:
To find out, you will have to sit through a short yet seemingly long saga of repetitive conflicts - both in the mind of the protagonist and in real. This psycho serial killer film starts off with a chilling murder but soon slumps into a messy mind game of a gamer who is unable to get a grip of herself.
There are so many things unexplained about her that it starts to frustrate you. The whole of the first half we see just flashes of an attack that has left her traumatized, a tattoo on her wrist that is giving her nagging pains and an equally nagging housemaid Kalamma, who is the only other human being living in the unrealistically big house, away from the civilization. We also see Sapna spending much of her time playing the old video games like Pac Man rather than making one. The writers offer no explanation of why a young outgoing woman has no friends, neighbors, and parents who choose to let her live by herself despite such a vulnerable condition. One could justify all this for her need to be away from all after the attack but her character remains hard to read. All the same, it doesn't help that the entire first half we only see flashes of all the untoward incidents.
The film certainly picks momentum in the second half with more twists and revelations. But the pace remains slow. There are a few genuinely good jumpscares too. It definitely helps to have a performer like Taapsee in the lead, but her act offers no novelty. We have seen her like that before.
However, the events leading up to a thrilling climax may not be all that exciting but the climax surely redeems the film after all. It gives you a cleverly choreographed last fifteen minutes laced with blood, gore, and grit. But it is indeed too little too late.
If you're a fan of this dark genre and in no hurry to catch an average slasher flick, then wait for Game Over to premiere on one of the OTT platforms.
BY RONAK KOTECHA
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