Keerthy Suresh after Mahanati decided to act in female centric movies in Telugu and Tamil. But she got good offers like Chiyaan Vikram’s film with Hari – Swamy Square, Vijay’s Sarkar and did not accept Telugu film offers as many as she did in Tamil. She changed her looks and accepted Rang De, Miss India, Rajni’s Annatthe and now, she will be a part of Mahesh’s Sarakaru Vaari Paata. Her recent release Penguin landed on Amazon Prime Video and let’s discuss about this Suspense Thriller with a twist.
Plot: Penguin is all about a pregnant lady who lost her son, Ajay (Master Advait) six years ago. Her then husband, Raghu (Linga) abandons her and they later get divorced. She marries another man, Gowtham (Rangaraj) and she suddenly finds out that her son is alive. Her friends try to console her but she is still reeling in the after shock and depression post Ajay’s disappearance.
Doctors advise her to forget the past and move on but she decides to confront it. She finally finds out about Ajay being alive or she believes so. Police say another child was also kidnapped. On her way back to the lake, she finds her missing kid, Ajay almost with cannibalistic attitude. Still, the person who kidnapped him chases after him. Doctor David (Mathi) tries to improve the boy’s condition but a twist opens up his side of the story too. What is it? Who is the kidnapper? Watch the movie to know more.
Performances: Keerthy Suresh needs a good director and a good script to perform better. She was clueless as the script as it did not have a focus. Even her character seemed to have become a caricature than a real woman or mother. She just couldn’t handle the maturity that the role needs in few scenes too.
Mathi got a very good role but it was beyond his capacity. Linga, Rangaraj, Nithya no one really carry the mystery on their shoulders. They all appear randomly on the screen as the script doesn’t help them at all. Master Advaith impresses us with his understanding of a complex role.
Technicalities: Eashvar Karthic doesn’t seem to have a clear cut plot to go with. He had ideas about what to write but did not have clarity on how to handle them all. On paper, this thriller seems like a messed up drama that has potential to attract some interest. But the film fails due to that over dependence on the twist based screenplay.
Music by Santhosh Narayan, Editing by Anil Krish are adequate for the script. VFX work is good enough. Cinematography by Karthik Phalani is good in parts and doesn’t really improve the script as much as the director wanted it to. Not the fault of the camera person entirely but the director and he, lacked proper vision, one can say.
Analysis: Movie had too many ideas to discuss. Fallen angels, drawings, cannibalism, organ theft but everything is explored in the dumbest possible way trying to give it a clever thriller feels. It seems like a mish-mash of Kahani added to Scream and then putting it all into a template set by Psycho film series. Also, Stranger Things series seems to have inspired the makers a lot. On the whole, movie doesn’t increase your curiosity after initial 10 minutes.
Bottom line: Drags on and on so much that the visual beauty doesn’t matter to us!
Rating: 2.5/5
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