MERCURY — AN EXPERIMENT FROM KARTHIK SUBBARAJ
Mercury is a 2018 Indian horror thriller film, written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj. Though it is referred to by the makers as a “silent film”, it is actually a sound film which lacks dialogues. It stars an ensemble cast including Prabhu Deva, Sananth Reddy, Narendran, Deepak Paramesh, Shashank Purushotham, Anish Padmanabhan, Indhuja and Gajaraj
Karthik Subbaraj has garnered a reputation for making movies with novel themes, even during his stint as a short filmmaker. Although his feature films cannot be labelled as completely out of the box, the bizarre treatment he bestows on his movies makes them a delightful watch. From Pizza to Jigarthanda to Iraivi, he jumps from genre to genre and any news of his upcoming releases managed to attain the attention of Kollywood fans.
His 4th outing, Mercury, comes with an element of intrigue. Produced by Stone Bench Films, Mercury is a silent thriller, written and directed by Karthik Subbaraj that insists that �Silence is the most powerful scream�.
Story, Analysis, Technicalities & Performances
A gang of deaf and mute youngsters ( Demonte Colony fame Sananth Reddy, Anish Padmanabhan, Deepak Paramesh, Shashank Purushotham & Induja) celebrate a night birthday party in an inn at a hill station. Although they cant hear the sound of a hairpin dropped, they put on loud music to soak themselves into the feeling of a party atmosphere. They have a cook arranging savouries and snacks for them, who is miffed with their antics.They have a great time enjoying the company of each other and during the partying they happen to remember their school days and revisit videos and pics of old times.
Out of the 5, there is a love pair, who perhaps can be called as the lead pair of the story, abstractly. Sitting in the chilled air and enjoying the breeze ticks a romantic feeling in the pair and they go for a joyride. The other friends surprise them by joining them halfway. Continuing the ride. they ride to Corporate Earth ( the factory that left the poisoned mercury into the town) and pelt stones at its signboard revealing their resentment for the plight the factory caused to them. While they return, they play few silly pranks to face the wrath of the forthcoming.
The first half of the movie saunters, with the group wandering among different places to make up the screen time. The second half gets engaging with the actual episode. The story of the movie is wafer thin. It� all about a visually impaired person killing one after another with the help of his extra senses, letting them unescape from the premises. If there is Deja Vu now, then you must have seen Don�t Breathe. Mercury has a striking resemblance to it.
For a silent movie, what can be a called as a hero if not BGM. Santosh Narayanan BGM plays a crucial role in setting the right mood of the film. His BGM compensates by speaking in the movie that is deprived of conversations. His music intrigues the narrative that is laced with creepiness and ghastly affairs. His symphony at the climax is brilliant.
Thiru�s cinematography is rich. The night visuals of the hill stations where the surroundings are mist-covered and the tea plantations at the hill station are shown aesthetically. The camera also peeped into the nitty gritty of the interiors of the dilapidated chemical factory, taking us into the atmosphere of the movie.
The back story of the actors that comes in the climax is touching to an extent, for his BGM but it fails to tie up the loose knots and ends up as a regular horror film where we realize that even the evil ghost has a heart. The thought of experimenting a movie with silence is interesting despite the fact, there were few movies in the past that belong to the genre.
Performances, Prabhu Deva, has got an exciting role. He is fright-inducing, with blue eyes and blood stains over his face and his mannerisms and gestures as the revenge-seeking ghost are commendable. Sananth Reddy is balanced in his performance as a fear-stricken victim while others go little overboard with their sign language gestures and mannerisms.
If you think Mercury is a silent film similar to Pushpaka Vimanam, Padam Pesum, Puspak, Pushpaka Vimana, then you got it wrong. Neither in the genre or screenplay, are both similar. There are enough gasps, shrills and screams, apart from BGM to ruin the essence of a complete silent film. The group of friends speak in a sign language among themselves but accompanied with the mentioned ways to convey emotions and information. The sign language they use here is an adulterated version of the original, perhaps to make it easy for the audience to interpret, as there are no dialogues or scrolling subtitles.
The movie ends up as just as a mere experimental of Karthi Subbaraj with a loose plot but what came handy for Subbaraj is that the movie can be tagged as a multilingual movie, without the need of being dubbed or remade.
