Film: Mercury; Director: Karthik Subbaraj; Starring: Prabhudheva; Rating: * (1 star)
Sometimes the message is not enough. Not when you have to wade through acres of lush -- in this film quite literally -- to get to the point.
"Mercury" has a message about ecological devastation and chemical plunder. To drive in the point the director wearing his commitment on his sleeve like a renegade revolutionary rapidly running out of tricks flashes statistics of chemical carnage across the globe during the end-titles.
This attempt to yoke horror-thrills with a social statement left me cold. It is as unconvincing as the mighty Prabhudheva going through a role that requires no dancing.
A bit like Agra without the Taj Mahal no?
But wait here comes the redeeming stroke. In the elaborately-staged scenes where the blind nameless ghoul follows sound signals to track down his victims in a dilapidated ramshackle chemical factory reeking of death and plunder Prabhudheva uses the dancer s body language as an action machine to show his characters sniffing out his prey.
The chases in the environmentally challenged setting are interestingly staged parts of it being heart-in-the-mouth thanks to the cinematography and artwork which aid the ambience of shivery shindigs.
Prabhudheva gives his ghoulish character a life of its own. He fills the air with anguished shrieks that sends a chill up our spine. As long as he is on the scream we are game. But the rest of the film is so awfully loud messy and theatrical I cringed on behalf of the multi-talented Prabhudheva.
He deserves a lot better than this phoney salespitch at promoting cheap seat-jolting horror in the guise of a social message. The story of four young men and one young woman who are hounded by a zinced-out zombie who tracks them down with the help of sound is clearly inspired by Fede Alvarez s 2016 horror-thriller "Don t Breathe".
"Mercury" doesn t allow you to breathe either. It suffocates you with the over-elaborate background score and amateur actors who gesticulate like circus artistes in lieu of genuine sign language.
Silent film? "Mercury" is as silent as goat whose throat is being slit.
--IANS
skj/pgh/
