If other directors place a mirror in front of their actors to capture their emotions, Mysskin would place a prism for the emotions to ‘refract’! He is one of the few directors who has taken the road less traveled by solely believing in his content and craft. Mysskin’s narrative style helps us in retrospecting the old and mundane happening with a newer perspective. His latest, ‘Psycho’ too reiterates the age-old lore of ‘Angulimala’ that is often a referral point from Buddhist literature for redemption and self-realization.
Mysskin’s Psycho is right on the money wherein it starts with a strange man (psycho, who else?) opening the steel doors of what seems to be a butcher room. A lady is tied up to a butcher's table. Before she could plead, her head is chopped with a sharp knife and rolls over on the blood-stained tiles of the floor. Then, the film’s opening credits kick in.
The killer is revealed at the beginning, we get a sense of what he does for a living, and also how he lures women to butcher them. In a parallel track, there is a one-sided love between Gautham (Udhayanithi), a visually challenged and Dhahini (Aditi), a radio jockey. In the subsequent scenes, as we predict, Dhahini gets kidnapped by the killer. What happens to Dhahini? Did she survive the wrath of the psycho?
A vital aspect for any thriller would be ‘why does the killer kill’ more than ‘how does he go about doing it’. That was the most disappointing aspect of Mysskin’s Psycho! We get the child abuse angle of the killer (as predicted), but then why does he choose a certain kind of woman and why does he choose prostitutes to be the surrogates when he doesn't get to kill someone whom he wants. These were the critical loose ends in the plot.
As with the past Mysskin movies, there were quirks in terms of performances and staging of scenes. Surprisingly there were no extensive low angle ‘feet shots’ that make us restless after sometime. However, Nithya Menon as ‘Kamala Das’ more than compensated for that with her swearings and cuss words. Though it goes overboard at times that we tend to empathize with the character after a point.
Director Ram who was cast as a cop had a very strange role where he croons AM Raja numbers during crunch moments. Aditi Rao had a key role, but she noticeably underplayed it. Another noteworthy mention is Preetham as the wicked ‘teacher’. Her theatrical background and an authoritarian voice added to the murkiness. Singampuli was the glorified sidekick who ends up getting chopped with a naive scene to his credit. Rajkumar Pitchumani as the psycho was deadly!
Ilayaraja’s background score was an aural delight. ‘Unna Nenachu’ was melting, while ‘Neenga Mudiyuma’ was both funny and exciting with a blind Udhayanidhi getting behind the wheels with a quadriplegic Kamala by his side!
I missed the finer knots and the quirky staging of the scenes that yells out that this is a ‘Mysskin film’. Instead, the treatment was flat with loads of violence and disturbing visuals that could have made sense with a much more thrilling and sinister plot. All we end up getting is a beautiful lady in a ‘non-yellow’ bikini with her head chopped. Alfred Hitchcock deserved a better film!
Verdict: Average!
Rating: 2.5 / 5
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