Roy Malayalam Movie

Feature Film | 2022 | Mystery, Thriller | 2h 6min
Critics:
Roy is a thriller with a lot of promise and a great build-up that gradually becomes weak. Like a slow-burn novel, we get tidbits scene by scene, and the level of intrigue in the script makes us want to watch the whole thing. However, the climax is preposterous.
Dec 13, 2022 By Sreejith Mullappilly

Where To Watch:
Streaming:
   Sony LIV

Writer-director Sunil Ibrahim's Roy is both a thriller and psychological drama. In the film, Suraj Venjaramoodu plays a man with a mental disorder characterized by an inability to tell his dreams and reality apart. The movie does not explain this condition, but the premise is interesting up to a point. Whenever Roy has a specific experience, we are told whether it is a dream or real-life situation. Things become complicated for Roy and those in and around his life when his condition blurs the lines between fact and fiction.


Roy's wife Teena (Sija Rose) goes missing after she goes in search of writer Rajagopal (Sreeraman). Roy plays a big part in Teena's decision to follow the path of the missing writer. But when Teena goes missing, Roy becomes sort of an unreliable narrator for the cops, due to his mental health condition.


Director Sunil Ibrahim presents Roy's dreams in a way that makes these events seem like figments of his imagination. Like a slow-burn novel, we get small pieces of information scene by scene, and the level of intrigue in the script makes us want to watch the whole thing. However, the climax is really illogical. Roy is one of those thrillers with a lot of promise and a great build-up that fizzles out. Given the lack of explanation for Roy's health condition and behavior, the director should have taken a more mysterious approach to storytelling. In other words, he should not have revealed that Roy is dreaming whenever he is doing so.


There is also a good cop and a bad cop in the movie. The bad cop makes fun of Roy's mental health condition for no apparent reason. The good cop tells Roy that the bad cop has a lot of investigation expertise, but there is no action to substantiate this trait. It is what it is.


The movie also makes a mistake by terming Roy a lucid dreamer. Roy does not meet any of psychologist Paul Tholey's conditions that constitute a lucid dream. How can a psychology department regard Roy as a lucid dreamer when he fails to satisfy all of those conditions? The movie asks us to suspend our disbelief a bit too much.


Notwithstanding the aforementioned flaws, the movie keeps us somewhat invested in the proceedings with an intriguing build-up to the events in the climax, a haunting background score, and a couple of good performances. Sija Rose is confident in the role of a journalist and really good as an empathetic wife. Few actors in Malayalam cinema can play a troubled man as well as Suraj Venjaramoodu does. Suraj's measured, controlled performance is the glue that somewhat holds this uneven thriller together. Some of his scenes with Sija are really nice.

Sreejith Mullappilly

   

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