Director: Innasi Pandiyan
Forged: Arulnithi, Pavithra Marimuthu, Kishore Kumar G, V Jayaprakash
Arulnithi’s Diary appears to be a movie that was written backwards. It’s a thriller with many supernatural parts thrown in and it requires us to carry on to giant items of data for a very long time, just for them to make sense when the twists are revealed. However the problem with Diary isn’t simply that it’s written round one or two main twists. There are lots of and they’re directed in direction of us beginning on the one-hour mark with a brand new revelation coming in each 10 minutes or so. At first you’re amused that it has taken so lengthy for these concepts to lastly come collectively. By the third large revelation, it feels too co-incidental to really feel actual anymore. And by the fourth or fifth twist, you don’t care anymore as a result of something can occur at any cut-off date.
That is usually the sensation that dilutes a few of the placing concepts in Diary. My favorite amongst these is the idea of a haunted bus with a mysterious set of passengers travelling on the final bus out of Ooty. Every passenger has a historical past and a function, and that is made extra fascinating when it appears like a mixture of genres throughout the bus itself with an investigation, a comedy, a romance and a horror film being performed abruptly.
Individually, every of those parts really feel too fundamental to really make a distinction. The comedy subplot, as an example, is that of a person cracking one joke after one other on his option to elope together with his lover, the evening earlier than her marriage ceremony. On the opposite facet is the drama of a younger couple on the run after the woman’s MLA father sends goons to kill them. Let’s take the case of this younger couple to clarify why we by no means really feel something for them. This can be a couple whose plight is supposed to be the emotional base for the entire movie. They’re younger and earnest and they’re on the run from a set of people that will certainly homicide them. However the second the couple begins opening up they’re additionally silly sufficient to disclose that they’ve include a giant bag of gold, that too with the precise quantity. Now when the couple themselves are naive sufficient to threat their lives with this info, we don’t actually care in the event that they keep alive or not.
That is usually the take care of each character within the movie. With the format of the screenplay obsessing over the subsequent large twist, it forgets to position any form of emphasis on bringing these characters alive. They need to have felt actual for us to take care of them, however they’re simply doing their very own factor with out a care on this planet for why they’re doing them. And you’re feeling this most within the excruciatingly lengthy first hour, when the plot is ready up. An under-training sub inspector (Arulnithi) randomly picks an unsolved case to analyze as his first project. He meets a cute police inspector, they fall in love, we get a fundamental AF love track they usually additionally begin investigating earlier than the precise plot kicks in with the haunted bus. With random occasions akin to a person stealing this officer’s automotive compelled into the screenplay for these occasions to start, there’s simply an excessive amount of silliness early on for us to take the movie severely.
However when our defences are down and when the movie willingly dumps any effort to remain logical, there may be some enjoyable available. One explicit twist felt surprisingly unique though you’re feeling irritated that they didn’t do extra with the concept. It’s additionally a movie that brings collectively too many alternative strands to make a bigger level, making it really feel overstuffed and tiring. With a bit of bit extra care and a extra cautious selection of subplots, we wouldn’t want to attend for the twists alone to get to the purpose. With loud and irritating performances, foolish dialogues and an general hollowness in the best way its written, Diary isn’t fairly the page-turner it might have so simply been. A movie a few haunted bus travelling by the ghats at midnight wanted to be way more enjoyable than this.