C U Soon Review: A Gripping & Moving Thriller

C  U Soon(Amazon  Prime)

Starring  Fahad Faasil,  Roshan Mathew, Darshana Rajendran

Written  & directed  by  Mahesh Naryanan

Rating: ****

Thank God  for happy endings. Well, almost. This  thriller  about an online dating  plan gone horribly  wrong, has a whole lot of balls, plus  a steadily beating heart.And it ends on a bright note. We need  that.

The important  detail that we  must remember is  that  the whole 98-minute film has been  shot  on IPhones. So now we finally know why they are called smartphones. This  is as smart  a thriller as they come with some of Malayalam cinema’s finest young talent pitching in with  a conviction born  out of isolation.

 Not surprisingly the well thought-out thriller simulates a taut  tempo  at a slow-burn temperature. Since the world is  under a lockdown  none  of  the characters  is in a hurry to  go anywhere. The  plot, done up entirely in a virtual format,  takes its time to  whip up a frenetic  anxiety . By the time we reach  the devastating climax, there is  no escaping from the film’s  vice-like grip on  our senses.

A piano-based deceptively calm and soothing background score by Gopi Sunder goes a  long way  in  getting our undivided  attention as love-stuck Jimmy (Roshan Mathew) befriends the troubled Anu(Darshana Rajendran) in Dubai on the digital platform.

Remarkably  the  entire romance and the  horrific aftermath  unfolds through images on computers and phones . This is an ingenious  invention born  out of  necessity as  the film is shot  in quarantine. At the same time that sense of virtual disengagement  gives  a muscular  immediacy  to the narrative.

The  actors get into  the  mysterious melancholic  mood effortlessly. I could almost feel Roshan Mathew and  Darshana Rajendran’s growing fondness  . Mathew ,so brilliant recently  in   Moothon , Kapela and  Choked, is growing into one  of  the most interesting actors in the country.

But here it is the redoubtable Fahadh  Faasil who holds this robust thriller together. The way his  muted misogyny—his  horribly rude attitude towards his girlfriend—melts  and merges into a mass of repentance and guilt, is  a journey  undertaken  by an actor who  doesn’t stop at anything  in bringing his  character’s most secret demons on  the table.

C U Soon is  a very clever yarn  told through a  hi-tech  vision which  has  no room for extra baggage. This is flab-free thriller that shows us how constructively  new-age technology can be used  to  tell a story won’t let go of our attention  for even a  second. The last  film I saw which was shot completely on the phone was Aneesh Chaganty’s brilliant  Searching about a father’s frantic  search for  his missing daughter.

In C U Soon too a girl disappears.But not for  long. This is  a thriller  that doesn’t play out  a  tantalizing  drama . It  moves at its own volition sweeping its characters into a  situation that has no room for theatrics. Just plain blunt  facts plucked from newspapers. The rest is his  story more than hers.