{"id":4824,"date":"2016-04-23T11:15:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-23T05:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4824"},"modified":"2016-04-23T11:15:51","modified_gmt":"2016-04-23T05:45:51","slug":"game-over-film-review-taapsee-pannu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4824","title":{"rendered":"Game Over Review: A Taut Thriller Single-Handedly Elevated by Taapsee Pannu"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A<\/span>woman\u2019s body is both, her biggest weakness and her greatest weapon. If the world derives pleasure out of brutalising it, women respond to that assault by using their bodies as tools of resistance. Ashwin Saravanan\u2019s <\/p>Game Over \u2013 <\/span><\/i>a Tamil psychological home-invasion slasher thriller, that is also dubbed in Hindi and Telugu <\/span>\u2013<\/span><\/i> thrives on this precise duality. There\u2019s arguably no other actor in the current generation who can bring this out better than the physically alert Taapsee Pannu. In the film, the actress embodies it with such ferocity that it feels less like a performance and more like a statement.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nGame Over<\/span><\/i> opens as a familiar slasher film. It\u2019s late at night on the outskirts of Gurgaon and a young woman strolls out to her gate to collect her food order from a delivery boy. It takes a minute for the film to reveal that we\u2019re observing her from the point-of-view of a serial killer, who watches her as she eats her dinner inside her house, takes a shower, and then falls asleep. What ensues is a brutal, merciless killing that tests the fine line between perverseness and originality. <\/span>\n\nIt\u2019s this chilling murder set-piece that forms the background for the opening credits, featuring headlines about the exploits of this serial killer accompanied by montages of women alone at night. Even though, the deaths of these women are merely implied, it is still nauseating, partly due to the shaky hand-held movements of the camera, and mostly, due to Saravanan emphasising on how unaware these victims are about being watched. After all, for women living in urban cities packed with high-rises that \u201cappear\u201d safe, it\u2019s this fear of being watched even within the confines of their own homes, that is the greatest horror of all.<\/span>\n\nBut then, just when Game Over<\/i> eases you into assuming its genre, the film quickly transforms into a suffocating psychological thriller \u2013 <\/i>eerily reminiscent of Pavan Kirpalani\u2019s criminally underrated Phobia<\/i>. It begins a year after the killings and revolves around the troubled Swapna (Pannu), a video-game designer who isolates herself in the aftermath of a violent sexual assault. Almost a year since the attack, Swapna is perennially scared of the dark and\u00a0 paranoid about spending more than a minute alone in a room. She takes to working from home, whiling away her days trying to beat the highest score in Pacman under the watchful supervision of her motherly caretaker Kalamma (Vinodhini Vaidyanathan), who remains her only contact with the outside world.\n\nThe trouble starts when Swapna starts experiencing what her psychiatrist terms \u201canniversary reaction\u201d <\/span>\u2013 <\/span><\/i>debilitating panic attacks and flashes of her assault as the one-year mark inches closer. Pannu, a strikingly gifted performer, doesn\u2019t so much act as she appears. As Swapna, a woman whose body is her only refuge, the actress infuses her body language with an instinctive fluidity. It\u2019s the little details that stay, like the helpless specificity with which she moves her tied-up legs the moment her assaulter touches her in a flashback scene. It\u2019s a sudden jerk, a movement that conveys a mix of fear, resignation, and agony with a clarity that is goose-bump inducing.<\/span>\n

But then, just when Game Over eases you into assuming its genre, the film quickly transforms into a suffocating psychological thriller \u2013 eerily reminiscent of Pavan Kirpalani\u2019s underrated Phobia.<\/em><\/blockquote>\nThe situation at hand, is further exacerbated by a tattoo on Swapna\u2019s hand that starts acting up, mysteriously. The tattoo is bestowed a supernatural backstory that ingeniously entwines unspoken sisterhood and the scars of violence that get imprinted on women’s bodies. It\u2019s an ambitious spin, in line with a hundred odd things happening in the film: A VR reality therapy angle that goes nowhere, an unnecessary emotional exposition that spoonfeeds a connection, and a manipulative accident. <\/span>\n\nBut even when <\/span>Game Over<\/span><\/i> falls short of living up to the ambitions it teases, it is never not gripping or flat out terrifying. The film benefits from its atmospheric cinematography that succeeds in conveying the fear that resides in one’s imagination, and Sarvananan is a clever director, who revels in economy. With a run-time of a little over 100 minutes, <\/span>Game Over<\/span><\/i> is tautly shot, has bare minimum dialogues (although the Hindi dub is awfully out-of-sync), and earns its jump scares. But most of all, it is Pannu, owning every single frame she is in, who elevates the film\u2019s intentions, even when its execution doesn’t go all the way.<\/span>\n\nThe film’s <\/span>grand ideas slowly reveal their layers in its violent, messy, and tortuous third-act that plays out like a video-game, rape-revenge fantasy, and slasher thriller, all at once. The serial killer from the film’s opening sequence makes a comeback, and the reversal of his hunter status, almost redeems its frequent clumsiness. It’s nearly impossible to not be left awestruck by how <\/span>Game Over<\/span><\/i> uses every second of its final 30 minutes to craft and sustain a tale of bodily rebellion: Under attack, Swapna, crawls with broken legs, tolerates physical violence, and repeatedly puts her body in harm\u2019s way to ultimately save herself. <\/span>\n\nAt its core then, Game Over<\/span><\/i> is a striking exercise in wish-fulfillment: for women battling demons, for women stuck within their demons, and for the women who overpower their demons, in vain. Yet enjoying the film also comes with a caveat: the more you want to read in between the lines of its wildly satisfying payoff (either as a comment on misogyny or female empowerment), the less interesting it becomes.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A woman\u2019s body is both, her biggest weakness and her greatest weapon. If the world derives pleasure out of brutalising it, women respond to that assault by using their bodies as tools of resistance. Ashwin Saravanan\u2019s Game Over thrives on this precise duality and there\u2019s no actor who can bring this out better than the physically alert Taapsee Pannu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":4825,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[141,1743,8469,2785],"class_list":["post-4824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop-culture","tag-bollywood","tag-film-review","tag-game-over","tag-thriller"],"yoast_head":"\nGame Over Review: A Taut Thriller Single-Handedly Elevated by Taapsee Pannu<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A woman\u2019s body is both, her biggest weakness and her greatest weapon. If the world derives pleasure out of brutalising it, women respond to that assault by using their bodies as tools of resistance. 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